CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 


BOOKS  BY 
GEORGE  SYLVESTER  VIERECK 


NINEVEH,   AND    OTHER    POEMS 

A  GAME  AT  LOVE,  AND  OTHER 
PLAYS 

THE    HOUSE   OF  THE   VAMPIRE 
CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A 
BARBARIAN 


By 

GEORGE   SYLVESTER  VIERECK 


NEW  YORK 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 
1910 


COPYRIGHT,  1910,  BY 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


Published  April,  iqio 


FROM 
THE   AUTHOR   OF   THIS 

TO 
THE    AUTHOR    OF   HIS   EXISTENCE 

Jf ran?  <§eors  Cttotn  Houte  OTitfjolb  ^Ji 

WHO 

WHATEVER   HE   MAY   THINK   OF   THEM 
INSPIRED   THESE    PAGES 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  reveals  America  to  herself  by  inter 
preting  Europe.  I  stand  in  symbolic  relation,  so 
to  speak,  to  both  hemispheres.  My  twofold  racial 
consciousness  serving  as  a  fulcrum,  I  am  enabled 
to  pry  two  worlds — Archimedes  aspired  to  lift  but 
one — out  of  the  furrow  of  their  mutual  miscon 
ception. 

I  have  seen  the  soul  of  the  subtle  siren  Europe. 
I  have  chronicled  facts  from  her  unwritten  history, 
from  the  secret  pages  of  diplomatic  portfolios. 
From  her  have  I  also  learned  verities  greater  than 
facts.  I  may  speak  ex  cathedra:  infallibility  I 
claim  not.  I  have  emulated  not  the  labored  mi 
nuteness  of  old  school  painters  who,  numbering 
each  hair  of  the  head,  make  themselves  rivals  of 
God,  but  the  thumbnail  sketches  of  Whistler  and 
the  chromatic  riots  of  Boecklin. 

My  book,  though  published  serially  in  William 
Marion  Reedy's  brave  weekly,  The  Mirror,  is 
journalism  only  in  the  sense  in  which  that  term 
may  also  be  applied  to  the  Relsebilder  of  Heine. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

If  the  dramatic  poet  may  fashion  himself  to  the 
exigencies  of  the  stage,  shall  not  literature  disguise 
itself  unreproved  in  the  cloak  of  news?  Only 
those  are  of  all  time  who,  like  Rabelais,  Cervan 
tes,  and  Voltaire,  are  in  immediate  touch  with  their 
own  time. 

Having  navigated  unknown  seas  of  Germanic 
psychology,  I  chart  them.  I  trace  the  tangled 
lines  of  an  elder  civilization.  I  record  spiritual 
data  that  elude  Baedeker.  The  guileless  Amer 
ican  mind  rebels  against  certain  peculiarities  in  the 
culture  of  Europe.  I  have  dived  through  troubled 
waters  as  one  dives  for  the  pearl,  to  discover  their 
hidden  meanings,  the  wisdom  encrusted  in  all 
things  ancient. 

I  urge  Europe's  gospel  of  tolerance.  I  lead 
those  who  follow  me  out  of  the  Babylonian  cap 
tivity  of  Puritan  prejudice.  I  have  been  accused 
of  posing,  because,  in  a  world  of  antinomies,  I  am 
an  inveterate  truth-teller.  This  is  my  flesh  and 
blood.  I  could  not  more  frankly  denude  myself 
in  the  sanctity  of  the  Confessional.  I  speak  with 
the  truthfulness  of  Saint  Augustine,  of  Rousseau, 
and  of  George  Moore. 

GEORGE  SYLVESTER  VIERECK. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE  OLD  WORLD  LURE  ....  I 

II.    FIRST  SHOCKS 9 

III.  THE  STATE  IDEA 24 

IV.  "  S.    M." 37 

V.    THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MILITARISM         .  51 

VI.    INSPIRED  BUREAUCRACY        ...  63 

VII.    THE  MORALS  OF  EUROPE        ...  74 

VIII.    ADAM  AND  EVE 85 

IX.    SOME  WOMEN 97 

X.    INTELLECTUAL   DRAMA          .           .  H5 

XL    THINGS  LITERARY           ....  132 

XII.    THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN  ...  149 

XIII.  GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS   .           .           .  166 

XIV.  WE  AND  EUROPE 177 

XV.    I  AND  AMERICA      .  196 


CONFESSIONS    OF    A    BARBARIAN 
CHAPTER   I 

THE  OLD  WORLD  LURE 

I  HAVE  no  intention  of  rivaling  Baedeker.  I 
met  him  abroad.  He  is  an  excellent  man,  the 
distinguished  son  of  a  distinguished  father — high 
priests  of  travel  both.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  take 
the  bread  from  his  mouth. 

It  gave  me  a  curious  feeling  to  meet  Baedeker. 
It  was  almost  like  meeting  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica.  I  had  always  thought  of  him  as  a  little 
red  book,  not  as  a  man.  I  don't  remember  what 
we  said.  Probably  it  was  of  no  special  significance. 

One  speaks  of  sins  of  omission.  Why  not  of 
virtues?  Besides,  I  am  not  a  vender  of  useful 
information.  I  don't  like  scenery.  I  detest  things. 
And  of  geography  I  have  a  positive  horror.  The 
distinguished  Harvard  professor  was  not  far  from 
right  when  he  said  I  was  more  interested  in  myself 
than  in  Europe. 

I  am  an  inveterate  individualist.  Men  and  ideas 
are  to  me  the  only  realities.  Even  we  human 
beings  are  but  ideas  incarnate,  particles  mys- 


2      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

terious  and  vibrant  of  the  great  world-brain.  Per 
haps,  as  Heine  suggests,  life  is  only  the  fevered 
dream  of  some  malevolent  demon? 

We  are  not  theologians,  however.  Without  in 
quiring  into  primary  causes,  we  ponder  with 
changing  emotions  the  prism  of  the  world.  Of  its 
multiple  aspects  some  to  us  are  exciting  and  novel. 
We  respond  less  readily  to  stimuli  already  fa 
miliar.  To  the  weary  eyes  of  the  gods  all  things 
are  hued  with  indifference.  I  shall  depict  the  ex 
ceptional  from  an  exceptional  visual  angle. 

I  admit  I  am  very  unjust,  and  surely  mislead 
ing.  The  grotesque  piques  my  curiosity.  I  over 
emphasize  sex.  Nevertheless,  I  am  truthful.  I 
practice  all  the  Christian  virtues,  without  faith  in 
any.  If  my  impressions  are  colored — they  are — 
there  is  always  Baedeker  to  fall  back  upon.  There 
is  consolation  in  statistics,  and  an  antidote  in  the 
atlas. 

Not  long  before  my  trip  abroad  I  had  lunch  at 
the  Astor  with  the  German  novelist  Felix  Hollan 
der,  literary  adviser  of  the  Deutsche  Theater  in 
Berlin.  We  looked  out  upon  Long  Acre  Square. 
My  visitor  was  disappointed.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  we  were  already*  too  sophisticated,  too  civi 
lized.  He  had  not  expected  Indians  in  City  Hall, 
but  he  deplored  the  absence  of  the  vigorous  primi 
tive  note  which  the  imagination  of  the  Old  World 
associates  with  the  New. 

I  assured  him  that  our  seeming  culture  is  all 


THE  OLD  WORLD  LURE  3 

superficial.  Can  we  learn  in  a  century,  except  par 
rot-wise,  the  lesson  of  five  thousand  years?  With 
us  it  is  all  veneer.  Scratch  the  American  and  the 
aboriginal  Indian  appears. 

The  savage,  to  be  sure,  is  more  interesting  at 
times  than  the  sophist.  But  he  is  utterly  absurd 
when  he  is  ashamed  of  himself,  or  pretends  to  be 
civilized.  The  average  American  in  literature  and 
in  morals  is  a  Hottentot  wearing  a  stove-pipe. 
His  sophistication  is  unreal.  His  wisdom  is 
shrewdness.  His  vices  are  ordinary,  his  religious 
convictions  shallow.  He  is  good-natured,  but 
ignorant  and  irreverent.  He  has  the  heart  of  a 
child  and  the  conceit  of  a  monkey. 

Abroad  they  imagine  that  our  minds  are  as  vast 
as  our  lands.  They  credit  us  intellectually  with 
the  expansiveness  of  the  Harriman  roads  and  the 
subtlety  of  the  Standard  Oil.  They  don't  under 
stand  that  we  have  subdued  the  forces  of  nature 
materially  without  having  conquered  them  in 
spirit.  We  do  not  penetrate  to  the  heart  of  things. 
The  poetry  of  commerce  eludes  us.  We  build 
highroads  between  continents,  without  imagina 
tion.  Our  outlook  is  provincial.  We  utterly  lack 
finesse. 

Our  patriotism  is  the  only  imaginative  ingredi 
ent  in  our  national  structure.  It  is  crude  at  that — 
and  hysterical.  And  it  does  not  prevent  us  from 
cheating  our  country  in  business.  Our  savagery 
is  apparent  in  our  mediaeval  administration  of 


4      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

justice;  in  our  vulgar  disregard  of  aesthetics  for 
morals;  above  all,  in  our  absurd  and  insincere 
worship  of  females.  The  American  man  has 
rightly  been  called  the  pay-monkey  of  the  Amer 
ican  woman.  He  pays  for  her  lingerie  as  well  as 
her  folly.  She  is  protected,  set  aside,  placed  on  a 
pedestal,  both  by  the  law  and  by  custom.  He  is 
defenseless.  Our  government  is  a  matriarchy  in 
disguise. 

I  was  born  on  the  Continent,  but  brought  up  in 
America.  My  racial  consciousness  is  distinctly 
dual.  I  am  at  home  in  America.  I  have  an  in 
sider's  view.  But  an  insider's  view  from  the  out 
side — dispassionate,  impartial.  Yet  I  am  not  em 
barrassed  for  a  thread  in  the  labyrinth  of  Europe. 
I  need  both  countries  as  a  legless  man  needs  his 
crutches. 

Europe  is  essential  to  my  well-being.  I  must 
bathe  periodically  in  the  fount  of  its  authentic 
civilization,  wallow  in  its  corruption,  soar  in  its 
dreams.  Still,  I  am  too  much  of  an  American  to 
lose  myself  in  it  altogether.  I  have  seen  its  depths 
and  its  heights.  I  have  conversed  with  counts  and 
cabbies,  art  students  and  ambassadors,  scientists, 
soldiers,  privy  councilors  and  prostitutes.  There 
was  much  that  I  admired,  and  much  that  de 
pressed  me. 

I  tried  to  understand  it  all,  and  to  make  the 
best  of  it.  At  every  step  I  became  increasingly 
conscious  of  being  constituted  differently  from  the 


THE  OLD  WORLD  LURE  5 

people  I  met  and  saw.  But  the  first  impressions 
were  overwhelming.  When,  alone  and  a  stranger, 
I  entered  Berlin,  the  luminous  heart  of  Europe, 
my  emotions  were  those  of  a  young  Barbarian  who 
had  crossed  the  Alps  for  the  first  time,  and  for  the 
first  time  saw  Rome. 

The  trip  itself  held  no  allurements  for  me.  Like 
Oscar  Wilde,  I  am  bored  by  the  ocean.  I  prefer 
sherbets  to  sunsets.  I  am,  however,  not  insensible 
to  the  loveliness  of  the  visible  world.  But  I  can 
not  take  it,  as  Germans  drink  beer,  in  slow  sips. 
I  gulp  it  down,  like  a  cocktail. 

It  is  absurd  to  go  abroad  in  the  summer  when 
everybody  is  in  the  country.  I  went  late  in  the 
fall.  There  were  only  a  few  people  on  board. 
Mostly  musical  students.  There  were  two  flirta- 
tive  Western  girls  with  their  mother.  The  mother 
was  like  a  hen — an  intelligent  hen.  The  girls 
were  singing  birds — pretty  and  flighty. 

One  of  the  girls  on  board  had  large  eyes  like  a 
doe.  They  tell  me  her  voice  was  charming.  She 
had  scraped  together  every  cent  to  study  abroad. 
And  she  was  very  grateful  for  every  little  atten 
tion.  It  hurt  me  when  she  laughed.  I  always  felt 
somehow  as  though  she  were  going  down  to  some 
tragic  cataclysm. 

I  hope  she  will  never  see  this. 

Then  there  was  a  flute-player,  a  spirited  little 
girl,  with  whom  I  was  in  love  for  two  hours,  while 
the  train  rolled  from  Cuxhaven  to  Hamburg. 


6      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

The  men  were  in  the  minority.  There  was  a 
coarse  ship's  physician.  And  there  was  Hans. 
Hans  was  a  sailor-boy,  eighteen  summers  old,  and 
absolutely  delightful.  The  women  made  posi 
tively  indecent  advances  to  him  which  they  would 
hardly  have  made  to  a  social  equal.  The  boy, 
clever,  well-educated,  requited  their  efforts  with 
smiling  contempt.  They  saw  only  the  smile.  The 
contempt  escaped  them. 

In  the  first  cabin  were  only  three  men  passen 
gers  and  a  tenor.  The  tenor  had  no  voice.  One 
of  the  men  was  a  Chicago  physician,  whom  the  law 
permitted  to  practise  and  to  kill  within  the  confines 
of  the  United  States,  but  who  went  to  Vienna  to 
acquire  more  precise  methods  of  murder.  The 
Standard  Oil  Octopus  was  also  represented  on 
board.  It  had  one  of  its  tentacles  there:  a  young 
engineer.  I  looked  upon  him  with  awe,  as  one 
looks  upon  a  policeman. 

The  Standard  Oil  Company  is  the  most  awe- 
inspiring  thing  in  the  United  States.  It  is  more 
stable  than  the  government.  Certainly  it  is  more 
powerful  and  of  more  profit  to  us.  Trust  mag 
nates,  like  politicians,  work  for  their  own  pockets. 
But  trust  magnates  can  afford  to  be  more  mag 
nanimous.  The  Trust,  being  productive,  cannot 
enrich  itself  without  enriching  the  country. 

I  completed  the  masculine  trio. 

We  spent  most  of  the  time  in  the  smoking- 
room,  discussing  women, — the  three  men  and  the 


THE  OLD  WORLD  LURE  7 

tenor.  I  did  the  talking.  The  trip  was  a  liberal 
education — for  them.  I  painted  the  Eldorado 
of  Europe  in  glowing  colors. 

Not  that  I  believed  in  that  Eldorado.  I  was 
afraid  that  I  would  be  horribly  disappointed.  Yet 
intellectual  curiosity  urged  me  on.  I  sometimes 
seem  to  myself  like  the  Wandering  Jew  in  Otto 
Julius  Bierbaum's  Selfsame  Geschichten,  doomed 
ever  to  seek  for  the  truth  without  believing  in  its 
existence. 

Emotionally  I  was  totally  apathetic,  until  we 
approached  the  British  Isles  and  the  Old  World 
Lure  began  to  exert  upon  me  its  irresistible  fasci 
nation.  Vast  and  multi-colored  vistas  came  to  me 
on  the  pinions  of  memory  when  I  realized  with  a 
thrill  that  the  jagged  line  at  my  left  hand  was 
Shakespeare's  England  and  that  "  the  pleasant 
land  of  France  "  dreamed  at  my  right.  I  thought 
of  Napoleon  crossing  the  channel,  a  prisoner.  And 
I  thought  of  another  sad  exile  whom  the  British 
have  killed  and  whose  grave  is  in  Paris. 

Oscar  Wilde  rests  not  far  from  one  whom  Ger 
many,  to  her  shame,  has  rejected.  Like  him,  a 
poet,  brilliant  and  cynical.  And,  like  him,  the  son 
of  a  race  down-trodden  and  melancholy.  I  won 
der  if  in  desolate  nights  the  ghost  of  Oscar  Wilde 
holds  concourse  with  Heinrich  Heine?  And  if 
the  worm  has  not  devastated  their  smile,  they  may 
even  smile,  seeing  that  both  are  revenged  on  their 
people.  Bernard  Shaw,  the  cynical  voice  of  Wilde, 


8      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

with  none  of  Wilde's  poetry,  has  turned  England 
topsy-turvy;  and  Jiingstdeutschland  has  received 
from  Heine  his  poison,  but  not  his  honey. 

And  I  thought  of  the  Vikings  who  discovered 
the  New  World  before  the  birth  of  Columbus. 
And  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  I  thought  of  Swin 
burne,  the  voice  of  the  sea  and  of  sin;  and  of  Dar 
win  and  Goethe;  of  Maeterlinck  and  D'Annunzio. 
I  thought  of  Jeanne  d'Arc,  who  was  burnt  as  a 
witch  and  is  now  a  saint.  And  I  thought  of  the 
Roman  days. 

I  thought  of  Caesar  who  had  conquered  Gaul, 
and  of  the  Briton  who  conquered  Caesar.  I  saw 
Plato  with  his  noble,  strangely  Germanic  visage, 
and  Socrates  with  the  face  and  the  cheeks  of  the 
Slav.  This  was  the  land  where  Jupiter  had  loved 
Europa,  and  Prometheus  had  snatched  the  fateful 
fire!  And  in  the  far  distance  I  almost  felt  the 
presence,  stupendous  and  terrifying,  of  Asia, 
mother  of  continents,  plagues  and  messiahs. 


CHAPTER  II 

FIRST    SHOCKS 

WE  in  America  make  things  most  unpleasant 
for  newcomers.  We  inquire  into  their  solvency. 
We  question  their  morals.  And,  naively  enough, 
ask  their  political  faith.  Europe  receives  her 
visitors  with  the  smile  of  a  woman  of  culture.  And 
beams  her  broadest  smile  upon  us.  The  Old 
World  regards  us  with  a  curious  mixture  of  amuse 
ment  and  awe.  Much  as  the  subtle-witted  Greek 
may  have  looked  upon  his  Barbarian  conqueror. 
They  are  afraid  of  us,  but  they  refuse  to  take  us 
seriously.  Some  one  has  compared  Germany  to 
Greece;  we  have  been  called  the  Rome  of  the 
Western  World.  In  Germany  to-day  the  spirit  of 
Athens  is  vibrant — there  are  some  who  say  that 
Plato  himself  was  a  German.  Our  coarse-fibered 
strenuosity  relates  us  in  many  ways  to  the 
Romans. 

Like  the  Romans  we  lack  ideals  and  ideas.  Sub 
tleties  are  beyond  us.  We  have  no  sense  of  tra 
dition  and  reverence.  There  are  only  three  tra 
ditions  we  cherish:  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  the 
Puritan  Sabbath,  and  the  absurd  superstition  that 

9 


io     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

the  White  House  should  harbor  no  man  for  more 
than  eight  years.  We  adhere  to  these  traditions 
with  Antony's  devotion  to  his  matchless  inamo 
rata.  We  nurse  them  with  the  frantic  affection 
of  a  grief-stricken  Niobe.  They  are  all  we  have. 
All  else  is  chaos. 

Irreverence  for  old  age  is  bred  in  our  bones. 
We  hate  established  things.  Like  children,  we 
sometimes  break  our  toys  merely  to  break  them. 
To  feel  that  we  can  do  things.  The  will  to  live  is 
strong  in  us,  but  we  express  it  crudely.  Fre 
quently,  to  use  a  Vergilian  phrase,  by  "  making  a 
noise  with  our  mouths."  On  Election  Day  and 
on  the  Fourth  of  July  we  are  the  noisiest  two- 
legged  animal.  The  rattlesnake,  not  the  eagle, 
should  be  our  national  emblem.  The  League  of 
Silence,  consecrated  to  humanity  by  Mrs.  Isaac  L. 
Rice,  and  the  "  noiseless  gun  "  invented  by  Hiram 
Maxim,  are  the  two  most  auspicious  events  in  the 
history  of  American  culture. 

Quiet  distinction  is  beyond  us.  We  must  shriek 
at  the  top  of  our  voices.  We  have  no  manners. 
We  lack  urbanity.  The  little  tug  that  takes  you 
to  shore  in  Hamburg  is  called  "  Welcome !  "  And 
across  the  bow  of  the  one  that  takes  you  back  is 
written:  "  Auf  Wiedersehen! "  No  American 
brain  could  have  conceived  of  this.  It  is  too  gra 
cious  and  simple.  We  would  christen  the  one, 
"Undesirable  Immigrant;"  and  bestow  upon  the 
other  the  appellation  "  Avaunt  I  " 


FIRST  SHOCKS  n 

There  is  a  train  that  takes  you  to  Hamburg 
from  where  you  land.  It  is  more  comfortable 
than  our  parlor-cars.  There  are  little  compart 
ments,  each  with  doors  and  curtains.  Drawing 
down  these  curtains,  one  may  safely  stretch  one's 
limbs  in  the  languid  sleep  of  the  wicked.  If  sleep 
has  no  allurements  for  us,  we  may  yield  to  the 
blandishments  of  his  brother  Cupid.  The  Ger 
man's  coupe  is  his  castle.  No  Pullman  porter's 
face  emerging  from  the  horizon  like  a  great,  black 
moon,  will  eclipse,  even  momentarily,  your  beau 
tiful  vis-a-vis. 

I  received,  however,  two  severe  shocks  on  that 
trip.  One,  when  the  conductor  on  his  circuit  of 
inspection  demanded  the  visible  evidence  of  my 
right  to  occupy  the  compartment.  He  spoke  to 
me  tenderly,  as  a  mother  speaks  to  her  nursling. 
My  astonishment  yielded  to  utter  felicity — I 
gasped  open-mouthed,  when  he  actually  lifted  his 
cap  to  me.  He  saluted  me !  He  made  me  feel  like 
a  railroad  president.  Courtesy  dwells  in  the  bosom 
of  the  German  railroad  conductor. 

The  second  shock  was  no  less  severe.  The 
Western  lady  with  the  two  daughters,  (the  Hen), 
was  the  cause  of  my  consternation.  There  was  a 
man  selling  beer  at  the  station.  She  almost  gob 
bled  up  his  tray  with  her  hungry  eyes.  But  her 
tongue  still  refused  to  articulate  the  desire  that 
had  already  subjected  her  conscience.  For  he  who 
looks  at  a  glass  of  Pilsener  with  an  evil  longing  is 


12      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

no  longer  a  teetotaler  in  his  heart.  At  last,  with 
a  gesture  of  despair,  she  beckoned  to  him,  glanc 
ing  guiltily  at  my  countenance,  then  lit  up  with  in 
comprehensible  glee.  I  am  sure  she  felt  horribly 
wicked.  But  the  struggle  between  thirst  and  pro 
priety  had  consumed  several  minutes.  Precious 
minutes!  By  the  time  the  man  reappeared  with 
his  tray  the  train  was  already  in  motion.  He 
slowly  vanished  from  our  field  of  vision,  waving 
to  us  from  afar  his  frantic  regret,  like  the  ghost 
of  a  sin  we  had  not  dared  to  commit. 
.  The  sense  of  propriety,  like  the  chameleon, 
changes  with  its  environment.  Americans  abroad 
are  humanized  for  the  time  being.  They  dis 
pense  with  convention;  they  breathe  with  a  novel 
freedom.  Our  conventions  don't  fit  us.  They 
don't  fit  any  man.  We  are  glad  to  discard  them. 
We  leave  them  in  cold  storage  in  Hamburg  or 
Bremen.  We  redeem  them  on  our  return.  Once 
back  in  America  we  are  very  proper — Tartuffe 
when  he  goes  to  church. 

When  you  arrive  in  a  European  city  the  first 
thing  you  do  is  to  take  a  cab.  It  is  delightful  and 
inexpensive.  How  different  from  when  you  land 
in  New  York!  Abroad,  if  you  think  you  are  over 
charged,  you  call  a  policeman.  And  you  are  safe. 
Alas !  it  is  not  so  here.  Recently  a  friend  of  mine, 
a  young  Hungarian  poet,  on  his  arrival  hired  a 
cab  at  a  Hoboken  ferry.  His  destination  was 
Harlem.  When  the  cabby  finally  mentioned  his 


FIRST  SHOCKS  13 

price,  the  bard  insisted  upon  being  driven  back 
to  Police  Headquarters  in  Mulberry  street.  He 
came  near  being  locked  up.  In  the  end  he  had  to 
unburden  his  pocket  of  twenty-five  dollars.  For 
that  price  you  can  hire  a  cab  for  a  week  in 
Berlin. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  cab.  Need  I 
conjure  up  the  delightful  murders  and  mysterious 
elopements  the  novelist's  imagination  associates 
with  this  vehicle?  Wherever  the  hansom  monop 
olizes  traffic,  life  is  wonderful  and  complex.  It  is 
an  inducement  to  self-respect.  It  makes  you  feel 
like  a  millionaire.  The  swift  revolution  of  the 
wheels  annihilates  distance,  and  creates  class  dis 
tinction.  I  can  afford  to  take  a  cab.  My  wash 
erwoman  cannot.  That  is,  abroad.  In  this  coun 
try  we  would  both  travel  by  trolley,  and  I  should 
have  to  give  her  my  seat  if  the  car  were  crowded. 
I  don't  want  to  hang  on  the  same  strap  with  my 
barber!  Not  that  I  am  a  snob.  But  the  thing  is 
impossible. 

Europe  recognizes  without  much  ado  the  bar 
rier  between  us.  America  blatantly  denies  the 
ultimate  lesson  of  evolution,  the  doctrine  of  dif 
ferentiation.  Here  he  and  I  are  equals,  unless  my 
coffers  overflow  with  iniquitous  riches,  and  the 
smell  of  gasoline  is  sweet  in  my  nostrils.  Then, 
indeed,  even  Justice  will  incline  her  scale  in  my 
favor,  and  the  magistrates  of  the  police  court,  sit 
ting  in  judgment  over  the  quick,  not  the  dead,  will 


14     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

tenderly  hail  me  by  name  when  a  blundering  offi 
cer  of  the  law  has  again  arrested  my  speed  and 
my  chauffeur. 

In  Europe  the  barber  will  always  remember  his 
station.  He  will  not  forget  it  if  we  meet  on  the 
street.  Decades  may  pass  while  he  wields  the 
razor;  his  shavings  may  amount  to  a  pile:  he  will 
still  be  a  menial.  Of  course  the  case  is  different 
if  he  suddenly  develops  a  tenor  voice.  Then  Eu 
rope  will  carry  him  upon  her  shoulders.  The 
bomb  of  genius  breaks  through  the  barrier  of 
caste.  But  the  day  we  erase  from  our  cerebrum 
the  absurd  fallacy  of  equality  we  shall  rejoin  the 
choir  of  civilized  nations.  Inequality,  differentia 
tion — as  Washington  knew — is  the  essence  of 
culture. 

On  leaving  the  cab  you  tip  the  coachman;  only 
a  few  pennies — he  will  salute  you,  and  smile,  and 
be  happy.  In  America,  where  he  is  your  equal, 
he  will  pocket  your  generous  tip  with  a  savage 
growl,  as  if  you  had  tried  to  insult  him.  He  will 
hardly  say  "  Thank  you !  "  In  that  respect  he 
seems  to  have  entered  into  a  silent  conspiracy  with 
his  cousin  the  barber,  and  his  brother  the  waiter. 
When  I  give  a  tip  abroad,  I  feel  that  the  Record 
ing  Angel  is  entering  the  transaction  on  the  credit 
side  of  my  ledger.  When  I  tip  an  American  I 
feel  I  am  being  robbed.  Wine  turns  to  gall 
in  my  glass.  I  become  a  misanthrope  and  a 
miser. 


FIRST  SHOCKS  15 

At  the  hotel  you  will  probably  order  a  meal. 
You  may  not  want  a  hearty  meal.  You  may  not 
feel  like  eating  your  way  through  a  big  table 
d'hote.  So  you  order  some  Wiener  Schnitzel,  and 
Preisselbeeren,  and  some  Moselle  wine.  The 
Preisselbeere,  let  me  add,  is  the  cranberry  raised 
to  the  wth  power.  The  waiter  brings  you  the 
viands,  not  as  if  he  were  doing  you  a  favor,  but 
as  if  you  were  actually  a  person  of  consideration. 
Everything  he  brings  you  is  toothsome.  There  is 
a  delightful  individuality  about  it  all. 

Our  lack  of  imagination  is  most  obvious  in  our 
food.  The  art  of  dining  expires  upon  the  bosoms 
of  our  cooks.  The  intolerable  monotony  of  the 
American  menu  merits  a  chapter  in  Dante's  In 
ferno.  We  are  invariably  compelled  to  fall  back 
upon  the  last  resort  of  the  unimaginative — steak. 
In  Europe  every  restaurant  has  its  specialties.  Try 
the  same  dainty  in  two  different  ratskellers;  you 
can  tell  blindfolded  which  is  which.  That 
is,  if  you  are  a  gourmet.  If  you  chew  your 
food  with  your  imagination,  not  alone  with  your 
teeth. 

Ah !  and  the  nice  crisp  rolls  they  have !  And  for 
their  rye  bread  I  would  sell  my  soul  to  the  devil. 
You  are  about  to  regale  yourself  with  the  bread. 
Suddenly  you  miss  something.  "  Ober!  "  you  cry. 
That  means  Waiter  Superior.  Every  German 
waiter  is  called  Herr  Ober.  That  is  a  sop  to  Ger 
man  patriotism.  It  implies  the  excellence  of  the 


1 6      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

German  waiter.     He  is  the  Overman  of  waiter- 
dom. 

The  Herr  Ober    appears    anxiously    scanning 
your  face.     "  Where  is  the  butter?  "  you  ask. 
"  Butter?    The  gentleman  didn't  order  any." 

Yes !  You  are  actually  expected  to  order  your 
butter.  And,  what  is  more,  the  items  will  appear 
on  your  check.  In  France  they  make  you  pay  for 
your  napkin.  But  at  the  final  reckoning  you  find 
that  you  are  saving  a  lot  of  money.  In  New 
York  I  pay  for  my  modest  needs  at  lunch  almost  a 
dollar.  In  Berlin  I  have  had  Backhaehndl,  a 
dream  in  chicken,  delicious  beyond  words;  inef 
fable  Preisselbeeren;  a  cantata  in  whipped  cream 
called  strawberry  bomb;  and  a  jug  of  honest  wine, 
all  for  one  mark  and  twenty  Pfennige,  or  about 
thirty  cents.  But  I  have  to  pay  two  cents  for 
butter ! 

We  Americans  always  expect  something  for 
nothing.  We  are  a  nation  of  grafters.  We  have 
not  yet  mentally  digested  that  the  least  is  always 
the  most  expensive.  We  pay  most  dearly  for  what 
costs  us  nothing.  Besides,  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
continually  wasting  money  by  paying  for  things 
we  don't  want,  or  don't  get,  merely  because  others 
presumably  want  them  and  get  them.  We  have 
an  idea  lodged  somewhere  in  our  cranium  that 
money  is  easily  made,  because  at  the  touch  of  some 
modern  Midas  watered  stock  turns  to  gold.  Al 
beit  few  of  us  are  initiates  in  his  secret,  we  are 


FIRST  SHOCKS  17 

tempted  to  emulate  the  munificence  of  his  house 
hold.  We  live  within  his  means,  not  ours. 

The  average  American,  like  the  savage,  makes 
no  provision  for  the  future.  The  mind  of  the 
twelve-dollar  clerk,  oblivious  to  the  actual  value 
of  money,  refuses  to  grasp  that  a  dollar  is  the 
symbol  of  half  a  day's  wearisome  drudgery.  And 
all  sense  of  the  significance  of  the  individual  green 
back  is  lost  in  a  roseate  mist  when  his  salary  climbs 
up  to  the  dazzling  height  of  twenty-five  per.  We 
have  yet  to  learn  the  rudimentary  fact  that  the 
value  of  a  coin  fluctuates  continually  as  it  wanders 
from  one  man's  hand  to  another's.  We  are,  in 
consequence,  the  most  wasteful  of  nations.  Waste 
ful  of  nerve-juice  and  sweat,  equally  wasteful  of 
forests  and  nature's  multiple  bounties.  Far  from 
being  a  business-like  people,  we  wallow  like  hogs 
in  our  transient  abundance. 

Here  is  waste  everywhere.  In  the  Berlin  sub 
way — to  instance  a  significant  illustration  of  munici 
pal  economy — every  man  is  his  own  conductor. 
This  I  suspect  to  be  a  devious  method  on  the  part 
of  the  State  to  cultivate  in  its  subjects  the  military 
virtue  of  self-reliance.  In  American  cities,  the  con 
ductor  sneezes,  coughs,  or  makes  some  other  inar 
ticulate  sound  when  the  train  approaches  the  sta 
tion.  To  interpret  these  catarrhal  noises  in  intel 
ligible  terms  well-nigh  exhausts  the  imagination. 
There  are  no  plainly  marked  stations  as  in  Berlin; 
and  who  would  dare  address  a  conductor?  His 


1 8      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

primary  function,  apparently,  is  to  impress  upon 
us  in  uncouth  colloquial  gabble  the  urgency  of  dis 
patch.  Sometimes  he  jabs  us. 

On  the  subway  trains  of  the  German  metrop 
olis  there  are  no  conductors, — neither  is  there  dan 
ger  to  life  and  limb.  There  is  no  obscene  crowd 
ing,  there  is  no  strap-hanging — modern  substitutes 
for  mediaeval  institutions  of  torture.  When  a  car 
is  filled  to  its  capacity  no  avaricious  syndicate  at 
tempts  to  disprove  the  truth  still  maintained  by  the 
physicists  that  two  bodies  cannot  occupy  the  same 
space  at  the  same  time. 

Well  may  a  sense  of  personal  grievance  intrude 
upon  the  calmness  of  my  philosophic  reflection: 
the  New  York  subway  system  has  snatched  from 
me,  (at  Ninety-sixth  Street),  the  best-beloved  of 
sweethearts!  How  well  I  remember  the  tragic 
occurrence !  Fate  has  engraved  each  detail  on  my 
brain  with  her  indelible  pencil!  A  sea  of  human 
agony  pressed  upon  us  from  all  sides.  Suddenly 
she  was  gone !  One  last  glimpse  of  her  beckoning 
hands !  One  last  swish  of  departing  silks !  A 
muffled  cry, — I  cannot  explain  it,  being  neither  H. 
G.  Wells,  nor  Jules  Verne, — and  the  hungry  jaws 
of  incomprehensible  void  had  closed  upon  her. 
She  had  actually  been  crushed  out  of  known  space, 
and  disappeared  into  the  fourth  dimension. 
Now,  in  Berlin,  the  police  would  not  per 
mit  such  a  thing  to  happen,  because  "  it  is  strength- 
ily  undersaid "  to  leave  the  platform  without 


FIRST  SHOCKS  19 

having  delivered  one's  ticket  to  the  Cerberus  at 
the  gate. 

We  are  wastrels  of  time  in  bar-room  and  club, 
but  we  risk  our  lives  to  save  a  minute  in  locomo 
tion.  The  German  law,  unlike  our  own,  does  not 
regard  suicide  as  a  punishable  offense,  but  at  least 
it  saves  you,  even  against  yourself,  from  being 
murdered — by  inches — in  a  crowded  car.  How 
ever  annoying  it  may  be  to  be  compelled  to  wait 
until  the  next  train  rolls  leisurely  into  the  station, 
saintship  does  thereby  hold  out  its  crown  to  you: 
you  may  practise  the  Christian  virtue  of  patience. 
Your  misery,  moreover,  is  not  uncompanioned. 
But  if  you  are  in  a  hurry  a  second-class  compart 
ment  will  hospitably  receive  you  on  payment  of  an 
additional  obolus.  Mortals  less  fortunate  travel 
third.  The  system  comprising  two  classes,  even 
in  city  traffic,  is  an  excellent  thing,  excellent  from 
your  point  of  view,  commendable  also  from  the 
point  of  view  of  your  financial  inferior,  to  whom 
plush  seats  are  not  indispensable. 

The  democratic  delusion  of  equality  and  mob- 
rule  has  not  yet  addled  the  brains  of  Europe. 
Abroad  even  the  Socialist  is  not  convinced  in  his 
heart  that  "  all  men  are  created  free  and  equal." 
But  people  respect  your  personality  and  your  com 
fort.  They  do  not  ask  you  to  twist  your  body, 
made  in  the  image  of  God,  into  ludicrous  shapes 
as  you  hang  to  a  strap.  But  they  boldly  affirm  the 
rights,  of  man — as  distinguished  from  woman.  I 


20      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  JBARBARIAN 

devoutly  believe  in  the  rights  of  woman.  I  even 
uphold  universal  suffrage,  irrespective  of  the  vul 
gar  distinction  of  either  age  or  sex,  limited  merely 
by  a  severe  educational  test.  I  believe  in  votes  for 
children  as  well  as  for  women,  provided  they  have 
the  brains.  But  I  vigorously  resent  the  monstrous 
attempt  of  the  American  female  to  usurp  man's 
rights  without  man's  duties,  without,  moreover, 
relinquishing  her  prerogatives  as  a  woman.  In 
Berlin  every  car  has  a  special  compartment  for 
smokers.  We  refuse  to  grant  to  the  male  that 
last  refuge,  but,  absurdly  enough,  institute  special 
cars  for  the  ladies — a  startling  flashlight  into  the 
feminine  character  of  our  vaunted  American 
"  civilization." 

We  fondly  imagine  that  we  are  a  practical  peo 
ple.  We  invent  time-  and  labor-saving  machines. 
Our  ingenuity,  however,  deserts  us  when  it  comes 
to  making  life  more  pleasant.  We  should  all  like 
to  live  in  houses  with  elevators,  but  insolvency 
stands  at  the  gate  like  an  irate  angel.  The  ordi 
nary  elevator  is  a  monstrous  thing,  devouring 
space  and  service.  But  the  wizards  of  Berlin  have 
installed  in  dwellings  hardly  larger  than  a  Nu 
remberg  toy  house,  lilliputian  lifts  commensurate 
with  their  size.  Electricity  ingeniously  applied 
supplants  the  attendant.  A  good  fairy  disguised 
as  the  landlady  presents  every  tenant  with  a 
magic  key.  When  it  is  slipped  into  the  keyhole 
the  elevator  promptly  answers  your  summons.  The 


FIRST  SHOCKS  21 

door  swings  open  to  welcome  you,  and  the  moment 
you  step  on  the  mat  within,  a  cunning  device  turns 
on  the  electric  light.  The  brain-endowed  elevator 
halts  at  your  floor;  you  close  a  partition,  and — 
presto! — down  it  goes  of  its  own  accord. 

Profiting  by  the  mishap  of  the  hero  of  the 
Arabian  Nights,  the  municipality  subjects  you  to 
an  examination  of  your  ability  to  pronounce  the 
magical  Sesame  before  the  key  is  entrusted  into 
your  keeping.  But  the  whole  affair  is  so  simple 
and  so  safe  that  a  child  can  learn  it  all  without 
special  instruction.  Rents  are  high  in  Berlin, 
comparatively  speaking,  but  many  people  can  af 
ford  to  live  in  elevator  houses  over  there,  who 
wouldn't  dream  of  it  here.  And  yet  I  feel  sure 
that  in  our  city  houses,  honeycombed  with  apart 
ments,  thousands  of  women  are  annually  crippled 
or  killed  by  climbing  too  many  stairs. 

There  are  few  things  beyond  our  reach  if  we 
are  determined  to  get  them.  But  where  shall  we 
look  for  guidance?  Our  instincts  are  wavering 
and  vulgar.  We  are  the  parvenu  among  nations. 
Our  children's  children  may,  perhaps,  acquire 
reverence,  refinement  and  polish.  But  there  are 
things  one  can  only  inherit.  The  atmosphere  of  a 
place  cannot  be  bartered  for  so  many  pieces  of 
silver.  We  can  purchase  with  our  gold  pigeons 
of  the  color  of  grapes,  and  of  the  color  of  slate- 
quarries.  We  can  pauperize  them  as  we  pauper 
ize  the  squirrel.  We  can  make  them  docile,  until 


22     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

they  nestle  upon  the  palm  of  our  hand.  But  we 
cannot  duplicate  the  Place  of  St.  Mark  in  Venice. 

Esthetic  values  are  connotative.  There  is  a 
picturesqueness  in  Europe  that  one  looks  for  in 
vain  in  a  newly-made  country.  Take  the  lovely 
swans  on  the  Alster  in  Hamburg.  How  lordly 
they  circle  upon  the  river,  fed  by  delicate  Ledas 
from  the  casements  of  restaurants  by  the  water. 
And  in  winter  the  seagulls  are  there.  Myriads 
and  myriads  of  them.  And  there  is  an  old  man 
who  makes  his  living  by  selling  fish  to  feed  them. 
You  cannot  help  thinking  of  Heine  watching  the 
birds  and  perchance  writing  a  melancholy  sonnet 
about  them.  This  is  the  city  where  he  felt  most 
at  home.  It  is  strange  that  he  should  never  have 
sung  of  its  loveliest  aspect. 

But  the  weirdest  thing  in  Hamburg  is  its  won 
derful  mists.  They  rise  from  the  ground  like  a 
thin  veil  until  they  swallow  the  city — Rathans, 
Alster  and  all.  I  had  a  curious  thrill  watching 
a  group  of  children  playing  on  the  lawn  while 
slowly,  with  mist-embroidered  wings,  the  after 
noon  faded  into  the  dusk.  At  first  the  milk-white 
veil  barely  touched  their  feet.  They  were  like 
angel-boys  in  some  Raphael  painting,  dancing  on 
clouds  at  the  knees  of  God.  When  I  looked  again, 
the  chilling  breath  of  the  fog  had  enveloped  them, 
as  the  Erl-King  in  Goethe's  ballad  envelops  the 
dying  lad.  Higher  and  higher  rose  the  white 
doom.  At  last  I  could  only  faintly  distinguish 


FIRST  SHOCKS  23 

their  figures :  they  seemed  like  children  frolicking  in 
blissful  unconsciousness  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 
Then  they  disappeared  altogether. 

They  must  have  caught  cold.    I  am  sure  the  fog 
is  unhealthy.    But  beauty  is  apt  to  be. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  STATE  IDEA 

WE  have  compared  ourselves  to  the  Romans. 
I,  myself,  have  endorsed  that  comparison.  But 
I  am  afraid  we  flatter  ourselves.  We  are  unde 
niably  resourceful  and  mighty.  Our  dominion  is 
wider  than  Rome's.  We  can  match  the  Appian 
Way.  We  even  have  a  sort  of  Caesar.  That  is 
what  the  French  call  him,  and  not  without  jus 
tice.  Caesar  was  Rome.  America,  through  Eu 
rope's  glasses,  is  Roosevelt.  We,  recognizing 
the  real  master  in  his  dual  disguise,  bow  to 
Rockefeller  and  Morgan.  On  the  Continent 
Rockefeller's  memoirs  met  with  scant  success. 
Roosevelt's  books  went. 

Like  Caesar,  Roosevelt  is  a  historian.  The  fu 
ture  will  speak  of  both  as  popular  leaders.  Greek 
students  will  perhaps  employ  the  Greek  equivalent 
of  the  term.  Perhaps  every  statesman  must  be  3 
demagogue.  And  every  prophet  a  charlatan. 
Theodore,  like  the  great  Julius,  is  intensely  the 
atrical,  and  intensely — convulsively — dynamic. 
Both  men  believed  in  their  star.  Both  men,  after 
startling  domestic  exploits,  submerged  themselves 

24 


THE  STATE  IDEA  25 

temporarily  in  the  African  jungle.  Roosevelt, 
like  Caesar,  has  hunted  big  game.  But  not  as  big 
as  Caesar's.  He  has  founded  no  kingdom  by  the 
Nile;  nor  followed  the  river  to  its  mystical 
sources.  And  there  was  no  Cleopatra.  That 
would  take  more  imagination  than  Mr.  Roose 
velt  possesses.  He  has  slain  lions,  instead,  and 
penned  laborious  articles,  at  a  dollar  a  word,  for 
the  Outlook  and  Scribner's. 

Intangible  values  are  beyond  us  all.  That  is 
why  we  adore  individuals,  not  ideas.  We  worship 
Roosevelt.  But  detest  u  My  policies."  The  in 
visible  world  is  not  for  us.  We  have  no  use  for 
abstract  ideals.  That  is  where  the  Barbarian  pops 
up.  We  might  well  learn  a  lesson  from  the  scroll 
of  the  Jews.  They  have  been  loyal  for  four 
thousand  years  to  an  imaginary  kingdom.  Per 
haps  their  children  will  bequeath  to  America,  in 
token  of  gratitude,  the  fine  idealism  that  still,  at 
least  in  prayer,  turns  their  eyes  to  Jerusalem.  Un 
til  that  spirit  shall  have  impregnated  our  system, 
we  shall  be  inferior  to  Rome. 

The  Romans,  too,  were  a  practical  people.  But 
the  Roman  brain  conceived  of  at  least  one  great 
abstraction:  the  State  Idea — Rome's  greatest  be 
quest  to  the  world.  The  Roman  law  is  only  its 
offspring.  The  State  was  even  greater  than 
Caesar.  He  was  great,  and  his  successors  were 
great  by  identifying  themselves  with  this  idea. 
The  majesty  of  the  Emperor  is  the  majesty  of  the 


26     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

State.  An  insult  to  him  is  an  insult  to  all.  Hence 
Use  majeste.  Every  Roman  owed  allegiance  to 
this  abstraction.  The  moment  we  believe  in  an  ab 
straction,  we  project  it  into  reality.  "  Civis 
Romanus  sum  "  was  the  most  tangible  thing  in 
Roman  civilization. 

We  remember  our  citizenship  only  in  trouble — 
when  we've  made  fools  of  ourselves  abroad.  We, 
too,  no  doubt  have  public-spirited  men.  We  are 
more  generous  than  Europe.  We  give  billions 
to  libraries.  To  universities.  Churches.  Hos 
pitals.  But  not,  willingly,  one  cent  to  the  State. 
Who  ever  dreams  of  paying  the  public  debt?  On 
the  contrary.  We  don't  mind  "  doing  "  the  State. 
We  swear  off  taxes.  We  perjure  ourselves  at  the 
Custom  House.  In  our  heart  of  hearts,  we  ap 
prove  of  illicit  rebates.  We  attach  no  blame  to 
municipal  thievery.  We  wouldn't  abstract  a 
penny  from  another  man's  pocketbook.  But  we'd 
all  like  to  take  millions  out  of  the  State's.  The 
State  Idea  eludes  our  brains.  We  are  shamed 
by  the  beehive.  Vainly  have  we  watched  with  un 
intelligent  eyes,  from  the  day  that  we  swung  in 
the  trees  by  our  tails,  the  government  of  the  ant 
hill. 

Where  the  State  Idea  crystallizes  in  the  execu 
tive  function,  we  actually  fear  it.  A  great  na 
tional  party  opposes  every  extension  of  federal 
power.  Our  Constitution  decentralizes  the  gov 
ernment.  We  resent  its  tangible  presence.  Even 


THE  STATE  IDEA  27 

benevolent  state  compulsion  revolts  us.  That  is 
one  reason  why  we  oppose  direct  taxation.  We 
prefer  to  pay  twice  the  amount  indirectly.  For  the 
same  reason  we  shall  never  be  Socialists.  The 
scarlet  flower  of  Socialism  thrives  only  upon  the 
soil  of  the  State  Idea.  We  are,  most  of  us,  un 
conscious  anarchs.  We  believe  in  the  greatest  in 
dividual  freedom,  in  universal  laissez  faire, — ex 
cept  where  it  is  absolutely  defensible :  in  the  sphere 
of  sex  and  individual  morals. 

Abroad  there  is  a  greater  laxity  in  these  mat 
ters.  But  rigorous  laws  regulate  everything  else. 
The  very  rigor  of  the  law  makes  for  greater  free 
dom.  A  distinct  line  exists  between  the  permis 
sible  and  the  unlawful.  Here  we  are  all  at  sea. 
There  are  so  many  contradictory  laws  that  no  man 
knows  where  he  stands.  The  execution  of  the  law 
is  left  to  individual  caprice.  Much  depends  on 
the  temper  of  the  District  Attorney  and  the  state 
of  judicial  livers. 

If  all  the  laws  on  our  statute  books  were  car 
ried  out  for  a  single  day,  the  land  would  be  de 
populated.  We  would  all  be  in  jail.  Abroad  I 
know  that  the  State  will  make  me  do  certain  things. 
But  I  may  sleep  peacefully  at  night.  I  need  not 
fear  to  wake  up  a  convict.  There  are  no  legal  pit 
falls.  Here  all  is  uncertain.  We  all  walk  on 
quicksands. 

The  moment  you  enter  your  hotel  abroad,  the 
paw  of  the  State  is  raised.  The  hotel  clerk,  trans- 


formed  for  the  nonce  into  the  instrument  of  a 
sovereign  power,  with  gesture  grand  presents  you 
with  an  ominous  slip.  Lots  of  questions  are 
printed  on  it.  It's  a  sort  of  examination  sheet. 
Where  do  you  come  from?  What  do  you  want? 
What's  your  business?  How  old  are  you?  And 
what's  your  religion?  My  traveling  companions 
were  furious  at  this  in  Hamburg,  and  almost 
speechless  in  Berlin.  The  City  of  Berlin  followed 
them  argus-eyed  to  their  private  lodgings.  Fail 
ure  to  report  their  presence,  we  learned,  would 
have  subjected  the  landlady  to  a  fine.  Before 
twice  twenty-four  hours  had  elapsed  inspectors 
would  have  been  hot  upon  their  trail. 

One  young  man  wanted  to  leave  for  home  at 
once,  or,  as  Schiller  would  say,  "  to  behold  Ger 
many  with  his  back."  He  had  been  requested  to 
present  himself  personally  to  the  police.  So  far 
as  I  know,  there  was  nothing  against  him.  He  is 
nice,  clean,  upright;  quite  a  likable  chap.  I  know 
— I  ought  to;  for,  to  tell  the  truth,  that  young  man 
was  me.  I  am  fully  aware  that  this  is  bad  gram 
mar;  but  in  moments  of  extreme  suspense  the 
elegancies  of  diction  desert  us. 

Resistance  being  futile,  I  obeyed  the  summons. 
But  my  feet  became  frigid.  My  heart  "  fell  into 
my  trousers" — that  is  how  the  Germans  phrase  it. 
Not  that  I  was  conscious  of  any  crime.  But  you 
can  never  tell!  There  are  so  many  laws.  And 
alone!  In  a  foreign  land!  The  police  inspector 


THE  STATE  IDEA  29 

looked  me  over,  not  unkindly.  He  asked  a  few 
questions.  He  nodded.  And  all  was  over.  My 
landlady  was  surprised  to  see  me  come  back.  It 
was  so  obvious  that  I  felt  hurt.  I  am  sure  she  had 
taken  me  for  at  least  a  murderer,  or  the  fugitive 
second  vice  president  of  some  financial  concern. 

I  had  brought  the  trouble  upon  my  own  head 
by  designating  myself  as  a  "  Fire-worshiper."  I 
had  in  mind,  no  doubt,  the  Divine  Fire;  but  in 
Germany  fire  worship  is  not  recognized  by  the 
State.  With  reluctant  hand,  I  substituted  the 
legally  accepted  term — "  Lutheran  "—for  my  fiery 
Credo. 

One  of  my  fellow-passengers  had  a  harder  time 
of  it  than  I — the  lady  with  the  pathetic  eyes.  I 
knew  misfortune  was  flapping  its  somber  wings 
over  her  head.  She  had  registered  as  a  Quaker. 
The  policeman  thought  she  was  jesting  unduly:  in 
German  the  word  is  the  onomatopoeia  for  the 
musical  sounds  that  rise  with  reiterative  insistence 
on  moonlit  nights  from  the  frog  pond.  Unfortu 
nately  neither  understood  the  language  of  the 
other.  The  poor  girl  was  terribly  frightened  when 
the  bluecoat  threatened  to  arrest  her  for  insulting 
an  officer,  an  instrument  of  the  State. 

I  regarded  the  situation  with  philosophic  com 
posure.  The  troubles  of  others  leave  us  extra 
ordinarily  calm.  Finally  my  good  nature  pre 
vailed.  The  girl's  friends  were  angry  with  the 
German  Empire,  until  the  joke  dawned  upon  them. 


30     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

It  never  dawned  upon  her.  The  deeper  signifi 
cance  of  the  incident  had,  however,  impressed  it 
self  upon  me.  I  no  longer  resented  the  solicitude 
of  the  government.  Far  from  it:  I  felt  pleased, 
touched,  elated,  moved  to  tears,  yes — and  flattered, 
that  the  German  Empire  and  the  City  of  Berlin 
should  be  so  anxious  about  me. 

There  was  something  personal  in  this  interest. 
It  was  cordial.  I  felt  Germania  had  taken  us  to 
her  ample  bosom.  She  protected  us.  We  had  be 
come  members  of  her  imperial  household.  Her 
concern  in  us  was  benign.  Her  questions  were  the 
natural  curiosity  of  a  friend.  Our  names  are  now 
filed  at  police  headquarters.  If  we  get  into 
trouble,  they'll  make  a  cross  against  our  names. 
They  keep  tab  on  our  movements. 

I  admit  that  powerful  arguments  may  be  ad 
vanced  against  the  system  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  thug.  However,  every  net  has  its  meshes. 
Criminals  have  escaped  even  from  Moabit.  The 
escapades  of  the  Hauptmann  of  Kopenik  have 
split  the  sides  of  the  world  with  laughter.  But  the 
Black  Hand  will  never  make  its  headquarters  in 
Berlin.  No  Mafia  will  there  raise  its  head;  no 
band  of  ruffians  establish  a  reign  of  terror. 

The  German  registry  system  prevails  in  most 
continental  cities.  It  is  annoying  until  you  grasp 
it.  Ultimately  you  walk  about  with  a  new  sense 
of  security.  The  European  merchant  princes  need 
never  pillow  their  calculating  heads  above  a  loaded 


THE  STATE  IDEA  31 

revolver.  The  forces  of  the  State  are  arrayed  to 
protect  them.  It's  all  the  difference  between 
civilization  and  barbarism.  I  thought  of  it  when 
I  saw  An  Englishman's  Home, — in  the  scene 
where  the  invading  army  first  enters  the  house,  and 
Mr.  Brown,  the  landlord,  angrily  calls:  "  Police!  " 
Ridiculous?  Yes.  But  also  sublime. 

Everywhere  is  the  eye  of  that  big  abstraction, 
the  State.  It  is  obeyed  even  when  its  vigilance  re 
laxes.  I  have  said  that  the  subway  trains  had  sec 
ond-  and  third-class  compartments.  The  tickets 
are  differently  colored.  But  there  is  hardly  any 
control  once  you  are  on  the  platform.  At  first  I 
felt  tempted  to  enter  a  second-class  compartment 
with  a  third-class  ticket.  We  are  accustomed  to 
countenance  breaches  of  the  eighth  command 
ment,  except  in  personal  business  transactions. 
Let  not  the  Gibson-  and  the  Christy-Girls  elevate 
their  haughty  brows.  They  are  hardened  offend 
ers.  A  corporation  isn't  a  person.  So  we  don't 
feel  bound  to  be  honest  with  it.  Now,  in  Germany 
you'd  be  regarded  as  a  common  thief  if  you  omit 
ted  to  pay  your  fare.  Honesty  there  is  not  virtue, 
but  habit.  Obedience  to  law  is  second  nature. 
Factory  owners,  strange  to  say,  are  habitually  care 
ful  of  human  life.  We  have  not  outgrown  the 
heathen  idea  that  so  many  pieces  of  silver  atone 
for  a  human  life.  We  find  murder  cheaper  than 
caution. 

Abroad    regulations    are    stringent.     But    the 


32     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

State  threatens  no  one  with  a  year's  imprisonment 
and  a  fine  of  five  hundred  dollars  for  trivial  of 
fenses.  In  the  state  of  New  York,  by  a  curious 
freak  of  statute,  the  penalty  for  adultery  is  half 
that  for  spitting  in  a  street-car.  Obviously,  spit 
ting  is  more  tempting  to  the  average  American 
than  the  allurements  of  Venus.  In  Europe  adul 
tery  is  a  pleasant  diversion.  No  gentleman,  how 
ever,  expectorates  in  the  street.  The  severity  of 
the  law  is  reserved  for  important  transgressions. 

The  Tentacle  of  the  Octopus,  the  youthful  hire 
ling  of  the  Standard  Oil,  recalled  my  attention  to 
certain  significant  facts.  The  columns  of  smoke 
writhing  like  graceful  serpents  out  of  factory 
chimneys  are  indeed  poison-fanged  adders. 
Death  lurks  in  the  breath  of  their  nostrils.  "  At 
home,"  the  youth  confided  to  me,  "  I  don't  care 
what  becomes  of  the  chemicals  that  escape  with 
the  smoke.  In  Austria,  where  I  am  going  to 
found  a  plant,  we  are  compelled  to  convert  them 
into  innocuous  vapors." 

The  Tentacle  wriggled  with  wrath. 

"  May  not  the  vapors  be  turned  into  useful  by 
products?"  I  asked.  "Man  extracts  gold  from 
water.  Can  he  wrest  no  treasure  from  smoke?" 

"  Certainly,"  he  replied,  with  a  contemptuous 
shrug.  "  But  we  don't  bother  about  it.  We  don't 
think  there's  enough  in  it." 

The  benefit  to  the  community  would  be  incal 
culable.  Children's  lungs  would  no  longer  be  filled 


THE  STATE  IDEA  33 

with  corruption.  But  the  benefit  to  him  as  an  in 
dividual  and  to  the  corporation  as  such  was  too 
small.  So  he  swallowed  his  share  of  the  poison 
with  Socratic  composure.  We  are  all  free  and 
equal  to  swallow  it. 

We'd  move  heaven  and  earth  to  help  a  cripple. 
We'd  all  chip  in  for  a  hungry  child.  But  we  don't 
mind  poisoning  hundreds  and  thousands  of  chil 
dren  daily  and  hourly.  Children  in  the  abstract 
fail  to  move  us  to  pity.  We  are  a  nation  of  Her- 
ods.  But  Herod  had  reason  for  slaying  the  little 
ones.  And  he  slew  them  mercifully  and  quickly. 
We  have  divers  methods  of  murder. 

Our  favorite  mode  of  infanticide  is  asphyxia 
tion.  We  take  air  and  light  from  our  babies  till 
they  languish  like  starved  little  plants.  Economy 
is  commendable.  The  Germans  are  thrifty  enough. 
But  they  will  not  let  sky-scrapers  blot  out  the  sun. 
The  height  of  a  house  must  be  proportionate  to 
the  width  of  the  street.  They  go  even  further 
than  that.  In  certain  residential  sections  you  are 
not  permitted  to  put  up  a  house  at  all  unless  you 
follow  a  prescribed  architectural  style.  Art  for 
once  wields  a  bludgeon,  exacting  subservience  to  an 
aesthetic  abstraction.  She  harmonizes  individual 
eccentricities.  In  Europe  each  town  is  an  entity: 
our  municipalities  are  jumbles  of  iron  and  stone 
gazing  squint-eyed  at  heaven. 

If  the  State  fathers  its  subjects,  the  community 
mothers  them.  One  city,  Schoeneberg-by-Berlin, 


34     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

has  entered  into  a  secret  compact  with  Herr 
Stork.  Every  stork  in  Schoeneberg  drops  a 
bank-book  on  the  window-sill  when  it  does  its  duty. 
The  city  presents  every  baby  with  a  bank  account 
— not  a  fat  one,  to  be  sure.  Only  one  mark,  bear 
ing  interest  at  four  per  cent.  But  it  is  supposed  to 
grow  nice  and  fat  with  the  baby.  If  you  happen 
to  be  a  million-dollar  baby  anyway,  you  are  twenty- 
five  cents  more  to  the  good.  If  you  are  not,  your 
wee  little  foot  is  placed  at  least  on  the  first  rung  of 
the  ladder  of  high  finance. 

Where  happiness  reigns,  health  is  the  twin  of 
wealth.  The  circulation  of  the  blood  is  more  im 
portant  than  the  circulation  of  money.  The  State 
paternally  enforces  its  sanitary  demands.  If  dis 
ease  eats  your  marrow,  the  forbidding  countenance 
of  the  State  assumes  the  benignant  smile  of  a  Good 
Samaritan.  When  old  age  has  weakened  your 
limbs,  the  inexorable  gatherer  of  taxes  will  replen 
ish  your  pockets.  The  United  States,  in  a  similar 
predicament,  conjures  up  the  specter  of  national 
bankruptcy.  We  are  too  poor  to  be  humane.  We 
must  spend  half  of  our  national  income  on  battle 
ships.  What  would  we  say  to  a  boy  who  invested 
half  his  lunch-money  in  boxing-gloves?  We  would 
actually  rather  deal  death  to  others  than  make 
living  more  pleasant  for  ourselves.  England's 
bill  for  Dreadnoughts  is  even  greater  than  ours. 
Nevertheless,  she  has  her  old-age  pensions.  Ger 
many  has  a  wonderful  system  of  compulsory  in- 


THE  STATE  IDEA  35 

surance.  If  the  German  owes  service  to  the  State, 
he,  in  turn,  is  not  unrewarded.  The  State  owes 
him  some  compensation — some  kind  of  decent  old 
age. 

I  may  not  have  gotten  my  figures  right,  and 
my  dates  may  be  inexact,  but  the  idea  is  this.  If 
you  make  less  than  two  thousand  marks  a  year, 
you  are  compelled  to  provide  through  insurance 
against  the  three-headed  monster — accident,  age, 
and  disease.  Your  employer  pays  one-half  of  the 
expense.  You  pay  the  other  half.  When  you  are 
old  and  cannot  work  any  more,  you  get  your  pen 
sion.  The  State  sees  to  that.  The  State  presents 
you  with  an  additional  annual  bonus  of  fifty  marks. 
This  payment,  insufficient  in  itself,  establishes  the 
principle  of  reciprocal  obligation  between  the  na 
tion  and  you. 

If  you  work  in  an  industrial  concern  where 
there  is  some  danger,  and  your  annual  income  is 
less  than  three  thousand  marks,  your  employer 
must  pay  the  premium  on  your  accident  policy. 
Suppose  you  work  in  a  factory  where  you  have 
been  earning  twelve  hundred  marks,  and  you  are 
hurt.  At  once  the  State  comes  to  your  rescue.  A 
respectable  hospital  opens  its  doors  to  you.  Your 
family  receives  financial  assistance.  If  you  are 
totally  disabled,  an  annual  pension  of  eight  or  nine 
hundred  marks  assures  your  daily  subsistence. 
And  if  you  should  die,  your  widow  will  receive 
a  pension  of  over  six  hundred  marks  for  the 


36      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

remainder  of  her  natural  life.  If  she  decides 
to  marry  again,  the  State  cheerfully  presents  her 
with  a  substantial  bonus,  and  still  contributes  to 
the  expense  of  educating  your  children.  You  don't 
have  to  sue  anybody  to  get  your  money.  You 
don't  have  to  accept  a  meager  settlement  and  di 
vide  with  a  rascally  lawyer.  And  whether  you 
want  it  or  not,  you  are  insured.  You  have  nothing 
to  say  in  the  matter.  Neither  has  your  boss.  Prob 
ably  your  wages  will  suffer  a  little,  but  at  least 
you  are  safe  from  the  poorhouse.  With  all  her 
military  enthusiasm,  Germany  is  not  unmindful  of 
her  soldiers  of  peace,  the  veterans  of  her  indus 
trial  army. 

We  do  not  even  pension  our  officials.  Recently 
the  secretary  of  one  of  our  embassies  retired  from 
public  life.  He  had  served  his  country  I  do  not 
know  how  many  years.  The  snows  of  seven  de 
cades  had  fallen  on  his  hair.  His  back  was  bent, 
his  strength  exhausted.  Yet  he  would  have  been 
exposed  to  actual  want  if  a  group  of  prosperous 
financiers  had  not  discharged  from  their  private 
fortunes  the  indebtedness  of  the  Commonwealth. 
We  love  to  brag  of  our  generosity.  But  we  are 
niggardly  as  a  nation.  We  underpay  our  public 
servants  in  office,  and  out  of  office  we  starve  them. 
We  subject  our  ambassadors  to  humiliation  in  for 
eign  capitals.  We  pay  starvation  wages  to  our 
Secretary  of  State;  and  force  our  ex-presidents  to 
seek  refuge  in  Africa  or  the  almshouse. 


CHAPTER  IV 


"  S.    M." 


"  S.  M."  is  written  across  the  map  of  Europe. 
It  flares  from  the  century's  forehead.  It  is  a  magic 
key  to  the  German  heart.  S.  M. — Seine  Majes- 
tat — is  the  vernacular  for  the  Kaiser. 

S.  M.  is  a  wonderful  person.  He  pervades  all 
Germany.  He  is  everywhere.  He  is  a  great  man 
— perhaps  the  greatest  contemporaneous  figure. 
Surely  the  greatest  riddle. 

Men,  I  have  said,  are  ideas  incarnate.  And  be 
sides  pur  natural  parents,  we  have  spiritual  pro 
genitors  to  whom  we  are  born  in  mystical  mar 
riage.  Strange  bedfellows  breed  strange  off 
spring.  The  fruit  of  the  marriage  between  Faust 
and  Helen  was  Euphorion,  a  spirit  of  unstable  and 
rarefied  composition.  When  the  Twentieth  Cen 
tury  wedded  the  Middle  Ages,  William  II  flashed 
into  life.  Euphorion  was  not  of  the  earth;  in 
him  antagonistic  elements  were  but  imperfectly 
blended.  William  II  is  cast  in  enduring  mould;  a 
felicitous  force  has  clinched  the  diverse  meaning 
of  two  inimical  epochs  in  the  brilliant  paradox  of 
his  being. 

37 


38     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Logic,  unaided,  cannot  fathom  the  mystery  of 
William  II.  I  have  always  worshiped  the 
Sphinx.  I  even  had  a  liaison  with  it  once.  Then 
I  thought  I  understood  it.  I  didn't.  But  it  is 
easier  to  understand  than  the  Kaiser.  Woman  is 
an  open  book  as  compared  with  him.  And  it  really 
isn't  difficult  for  the  Sphinx  to  be  mysterious.  Its 
greatest  mystery  is  its  silence.  But  the  Kaiser  isn't 
silent.  He  makes  speeches — many  of  them.  We 
may  interview,  snapshot,  and  paint  him:  he  still 
leaves  us  puzzled. 

William  II  reconciles  in  his  person  the  most 
incongruous  traits.  He  is  the  most  impulsive  of 
reigning  monarchs.  There  can  be  no  doubt  about 
that.  Yet  he  is  almost  Machiavellian  in  premedi 
tation.  That  telegram  to  Kruger  was  impulsive — 
and  yet  how  carefully  calculated!  And  prepared 
at  the  Foreign  Office !  Shrewd  observers  say  that 
the  historical  interview  in  the  Daily  Telegraph 
had  been  no  less  carefully  launched.  And  that  the 
hubbub  attendant  upon  its  publication  furthered 
some  far-seeing  plan. 

At  the  time,  it  will  be  remembered,  a  cyclone 
broke  loose  in  German  editorial  ink-pots.  And, 
behold!  William,  the  imperious,  humbly  bowed 
his  head.  Perhaps  he  smiled  to  himself  somewhat 
sadly.  But  he  said  nothing.  Sbnplicissimus,  in 
one  of  its  cartoons,  replaced  the  imperial  eagle 
over  the  entrance  to  the  Foreign  Office  by  another 
bird,  not  famed  for  discretion.  And  then,  one 


"S.  M."  39 

morning,  through  a  miracle  of  sudden  enlighten 
ment,  the  German  people  perceived  with  a  gasp 
that  the  greatest  defeats  of  the  Kaiser  were  vic 
tories  in  disguise. 

And  yet  the  Kaiser  is  not  a  hypocrite.  He  is 
temperamentally  incapable  of  deceit.  But  there  is 
no  explanation.  We  must  simply  accept  him  as 
two  distinct  personalities.  He  is  monarchical  to  the 
bone.  Yet  it  was  he  who  opposed  Bismarck's  anti- 
Socialist  legislation.  He  is  the  official  head  of  the 
Protestant  church  in  Prussia,  yet  Roman  ritual  and 
Rome  possesses  for  him  a  strange  fascination. 
He  loves  pomp,  but  his  children  are  reared  with 
bourgeois  simplicity.  His  preoccupation  is  war; 
he,  nevertheless,  is  the  stanchest  champion  of 
peace.  He  hates  the  English,  and  he  loves  the 
English.  He  is  a  mystic  and  a  rationalist.  His 
inclinations  are  mediaeval,  but  he  is  more  inti 
mately  familiar  with  the  technical  intricacies  of  a 
modern  gunboat  than  are  his  own  engineers.  He 
would  be  capable  of  restoring  an  ancient  castle, 
famed  of  minnesingers,  and  of  establishing  wire 
less  telephony  on  its  ramparts.  He  is  the  only  man 
who  could  do  this  without  being  absurd,  because 
he  is,  as  I  have  asserted,  the  sole  legitimate  off 
spring  of  Romanticism  and  Modernity. 

Of  his  two  natures,  one  belongs  to  the  Twenti 
eth  Century,  one  to  the  Middle  Ages.  One  is  des 
potic,  one  democratic.  One  hates  the  English,  one 
loves  them.  One  talks  freely, — perhaps  too  freely; 


40     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

one  is  silent  as  the  sepulcher.  The  Inquisition  it 
self  was  not  more  secretive.  Peace  lights  on  his 
right,  hounds  of  war  are  leashed  to  his  left.  There 
are  two  Kaisers,  both  of  whom  labor  for  the  bene 
fit  of  the  realm,  each  in  his  separate  way. 

By  this  duality  William  II  is  the  authen 
tic  exponent  of  modern  Europe.  In  Europe  to 
day  the  war  between  Science  and  Faith  wages 
more  fiercely  than  ever.  The  wolf  of  Modernism 
has  invaded  even  the  fold  of  St.  Peter.  The  lives 
of  most  Europeans  are  absurd  because  they  have 
not  yet  found  the  equation  between  the  Old  and 
the  New.  Faith  and  Science  live  unreconciled, 
in  one  bosom,  like  two  inimical  brothers.  Even 
we  who  are  a  century  behind  European  thought 
begin  to  vibrate  with  the  conflict.  Perhaps  Pro 
fessor  James  is  the  prophet  who  shall  lead  us  out 
of  the  wilderness. 

A  parallel  problem  is  presented  in  Europe  by 
the  incessant  conflict  between  the  monarchical  idea 
and  republicanism.  Mediaeval  institutions  co 
exist  with  democratic  institutions.  It  seems  pre 
posterous  that  people  who  can  think  for  them 
selves  should  not  also  govern  themselves.  Yet  no 
small  part  of  the  strength  of  Europe  roots  in  the 
mediaeval.  Something  of  this  struggle,  modified 
by  our  environment,  is  going  on  in  America.  The 
government  in  Washington  steadily  tightens  its 
grip,  while  the  steer  of  democracy  raises  its  omi 
nous  horns. 


"S.  M."  41 

We  live  in  a  curiously  transitional  period. 
Probably  authentic  democracy  lies  at  the  end  of 
the  road.  I  should  prefer  some  transfigured 
aristocracy.  The  greatest  individual  development 
is  perhaps  possible  under  a  cultured  tyrant.  He  is 
the  man  of  destiny.  His  brain  is  the  scroll  of  the 
Zeitgeist. 

Most  modern  monarchs  compromise  either  too 
much  or  too  little.  Great  Britain  having  disposed 
of  the  only  logical  basis  of  royalty,  the  divine 
right  of  kings,  her  ruler  exercises  primarily  an 
ornamental,  aesthetic  function.  The  Tsar,  on  the 
other  hand,  entrenched  behind  prejudice  and  tra 
dition,  lives  in  constant  dread  of  nitro-glycerine 
protests.  The  problem  facing  the  world  to-day  is 
the  readjustment  between  the  passing  order  and 
the  new  order.  The  mental  unrest  has  invaded 
even  Asia  Minor.  When  Abdul  Hamid  vainly 
tortured  his  wits  for  a  solution  to  the  question 
vexing  the  world,  the  monster,  Sphinx-like,  hurled 
him  into  the  abyss. 

The  giant  Modernity  everywhere  shakes  his 
fist  against  the  lavendered  glory  of  mediaeval  tra 
dition,  impotent  to  obliterate  its  immemorial 
traces.  William  II  is  the  living  incarnation  of  this 
great  contradiction.  He  is  logical,  because  he  is 
illogical.  He  is  the  only  logical  monarch  in  Eu 
rope.  He  is  an  ideal  Kaiser.  He  is  in  tune  with 
the  Zeitgeist.  If  Germany  were  to  be  declared  a 
republic  to-day,  and  a  president  had  to  be  chosen, 


42     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

the  unanimous  choice  of  the  people  would  be 
William  II. 

America  could  never  have  produced  William 
II.  We  lack  the  glamor  of  the  Middle  Ages.  We 
have  inherited  only  their  shadows — their  intoler 
ance  of  the  flesh  and  their  hatred  of  beauty.  Not 
ours  the  halo  of  tradition.  We  have  sometimes 
compared  the  Kaiser  to  Roosevelt.  I,  myself,  am 
an  admirer  of  Roosevelt.  But  to  liken  him  to  the 
Kaiser  is  like  comparing  a  phonograph  to  a  night 
ingale.  It  may  imitate  the  nightingale  bravely, 
but  there  is  something  missing.  No  mechanical 
ingenuity  can  conceal  its  absence.  There  must  be 
some  secret  property  defying  investigation,  like 
the  timbre  of  an  old  instrument — perhaps  some 
quality  of  the  blood. 

I  wonder  if  the  blood  of  kings  is  really  like 
other  men's?  What  a  pity  no  one  took  the  trouble 
to  examine  the  blood  of  Louis  Capet  when  he 
parted  company  with  his  head !  Perhaps  it  was  not 
blue,  after  all.  We  would  need  a  psychic  micro 
scope  to  discover  the  truth.  We  know  that  a  king's 
head  may  be  wrung  like  a  carl's.  Even  imperial 
legs  grow  heavy  with  gout.  And  the  abdomen  is 
dreadfully  democratic.  As  Nietzsche  says,  it  al 
ways  reminds  us  that  we  are  human.  But  the 
brain,  ah !  that  is  different.  Not  anatomically.  A 
woman's  brain  is  almost  as  large  as  a  man's.  And 
wasn't  it  Lombroso  who  couldn't  tell,  on  one  occa 
sion,  the  brain  of  a  genius  from  that  of  an  idiot? 


"S.  M."  43 

But  there  is  something  else.  There  must  be.  It 
lurks  in  the  brain-cells.  Some  memory — the  real 
self.  A  brain  where  the  notion  of  the  divine 
right  of  monarchs  has  been  rooting  for  genera 
tions  must  be  different  from  the  brains  of 
other  men. 

No  mean  man,  it  is  said,  has  ever  been  Presi 
dent.  The  majesty  of  the  office  is  such  that,  like 
Christ,  it  heals  the  leper.  Even  a  confirmed  klep 
tomaniac  will  renounce  his  nefarious  habits  when 
fate  has  made  him  lord  of  the  White  House.  Yet 
the  President's  reign  is  brief.  He  is  often  elected 
by  doubtful  methods.  The  King  receives  his 
crown  out  of  the  hand  of  God.  It  has  descended 
to  him  from  his  sires.  It  will  pass  from  him  to 
his  sons.  He  is  porphyrogene.  He  rules  not  for 
a  period  of  years,  but  forever.  The  King  cannot 
die.  In  the  animal  kingdom,  the  insignia  of  roy 
alty  are  corporeal.  The  queen-bee  differs  from  her 
hive  in  appearance.  Human  distinctions  are 
subtler,  but  no  less  real.  Any  young  bee  may,  if 
sufficiently  fed,  develop  into  a  queen.  Generations 
of  careful  selection  are  needed  to  evolve  a  ruler 
of  men.  The  king,  of  necessity,  differs  from  his 
people.  The  process  of  evolution  has  endowed 
him  with  peculiar  functions  for  the  business  of 
kingship.  This  heritage  alone  would  have 
stamped  William  II  as  a  remarkable  ruler.  But 
he  is  also  a  genius. 

"  William  II,"  one  of  his  intimate  friends  im- 


44     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

pressed  upon  me  with  conviction,  "  would  have 
been  conspicuous  in  any  profession.  If  a  cobbler, 
he  would  have  been  a  master  cobbler."  He  is 
versatile,  myriad-minded — strategist,  poet,  musi 
cian,  diplomatist,  huntsman,  painter  and  engineer. 
Nero  tried  his  hand  at  some  of  these  things.  But 
it  cost  him  his  head.  Frederick  the  Great  dabbled 
in  verse.  But  it  was  wretched  verse.  The  Kaiser's 
endeavors  in  manifold  fields  would  have  made  sev 
eral  reputations  for  men  of  lesser  caliber.  But 
he  still  remains,  above  all,  the  Kaiser. 

The  Prussia  of  Frederick  the  Great  was  less 
isolated  than  the  German  Empire  in  certain  crit 
ical  periods  under  the  present  regime.  To-day 
she  plays  the  leading  fiddle  in  the  Concert  of  Pow 
ers.  The  luminous  figure  of  William  II  domi 
nates  the  earth.  The  shadow  of  his  sword  para 
lyzes  the  British  lion.  But,  unlike  Frederick  the 
Great,  William  the  Great  has  accomplished  his 
victories  without  bloodshed.  For  one  and  twenty 
years  he  has  been  Lord  of  Peace.  The  Seven 
Years'  War  was  surely  a  wonderful  thing.  But 
what  shall  we  say  to  a  three  times  Seven  Years' 
Peace? 

Germany  is  divided  into  two  camps:  those  who 
follow  the  Kaiser  blindly,  and  those  who  oppose 
him  blindly.  There  is  no  neutral  ground.  I  have 
a  sneaking  suspicion  that  even  the  Socialists  se 
cretly  adore  William  II.  If  Bebel  were  the  Chief 
Executive  of  a  German  Democracy,  he  would 


"  S.  M."  45 

make  the  Kaiser  his  Chancellor.  Even  the  Oppo 
sition  draws  its  life  from  the  negation  of  him. 

The  Kaiser's  personal  charm  is  more  potent 
than  that  of  Circe.  Unlike  Circe,  he  turns  his  ad 
mirers  not  into  swine,  but  into  patriots.  Like 
Julius  Caesar,  William  II  can  be  all  things  to  all 
men.  He  is  a  brilliant  conversationalist,  and  as 
he  listens  to  you  he  seems  to  enter  into  your  mind. 
Yet  all  the  while,  his  mind  is  a  garrisoned  fort 
ress.  The  portals  are  closely  guarded.  Never 
a  word  passes  his  lips  unchallenged.  Caution  is 
posted  on  the  tip  of  his  tongue.  That,  I  believe, 
is  the  secret  of  rulers  of  men. 

It  is  almost  incredible  what  sacrifices  Germans, 
hard  men  of  business,  will  make  for  one  smile  from 
his  imperial  lips.  There  is  August  Scherl,  the  Ger 
man  newspaper  king.  Mr.  Scherl  controls  the 
syndicate  publishing  the  Berlin  Lokalanzeiger. 
Formerly  this  sheet  might  have  been  designated 
as  ultra-yellow.  Suddenly  Mr.  Scherl  reverses 
his  policy,  and  deliberately  makes  his  paper, 
politically,  the  dullest  in  Berlin.  The  whisper  had 
reached  his  ear  that  the  Emperor  read  it:  let  no 
offensive  opinion  provoke  a  wrinkle  on  His 
Majesty's  forehead!  The  circulation,  however, 
continued  to  soar.  Suppressing  its  yawns,  Berlin 
still  religiously  peruses  the  Lokalanzeiger' s  cas 
trated  pages.  '  You  see,"  the  German  explains, 
half  apologetically,  half  with  the  pardonable 
pride  of  sharing,  in  a  sense,  the  mental  pabulum 


46     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

of  his  ruler,  "  S.  JM.  reads  it;  I.  M.  (Ihre 
Majestat,  Her  Majesty),  also." 

And  yet  it  is  all  a  myth.  Far  be  it  from  me  to 
affirm  that  the  Kaiser  never  reads  the  Lokalan- 
zeiger.  He  is  indeed  an  omnivorous  reader.  All 
the  new  magazines  find  their  way  to  his  table.  His 
desk  is  strewn  with  a  bewildering  variety  of  pub 
lications.  Sometimes,  no  doubt,  he  even  sees 
August  Bebel's  radical  mouthpiece,  the  Forwdrts. 
It  is  all  nonsense,  of  course,  that  his  news-dis 
patches  are  "doctored."  William  II  would  brook 
no  such  interference.  He  picks  up  information 
wherever  he  likes.  But  being  a  busy  man,  he  has 
his  news  "  romeiked,"  to  employ  a  new  verb, 
coined,  I  believe,  by  Richard  Le  Gallienne.  The 
Wilhelmstrasse  supplies  him  regularly  with  clip 
pings  on  every  imaginable  topic  of  interest.  And 
finally  the  Fiirstenkorrespondenz,  a  sort  of  Liter 
ary  Digest  for  Princes,  supplies  him  with  the 
epitome  of  the  daily  news  and  excerpts  from  edi 
torials.  I  do  not  think,  however,  that  he  lets  that 
brilliant  but  venomous  reptile,  the  Zukunft,  coil 
up  on  his  desk. 

The  mention  of  Maximilian  Harden's  unmen 
tionable  magazine  recalls  to  my  mind  one  of  the 
blackest  chapters  in  the  history  of  the  German 
people.  Harden's  one  object  in  life  has  been  to 
play  the  advocatus  diaboli  to  William  II.  At  the 
time  of  the  Eulenburg  scandal  and  subsequently, 
when  the  Kaiser's  Anglophile  interview  exploded 


"  S.  M."  47 

with  bomb-like  concussion,  it  seemed  almost  as 
if  the  editor  of  the  Zukunft  had  planted  his 
sting.  The  cyclonic  excitement  over  the  interview 
was  largely  the  after-effect  of  Harden's  revela 
tions  concerning  the  alleged  "  camarilla." 

The  so-called  "  camarilla "  owes  its  existence 
solely  to  the  gossip  of  demagogues  and  of  lackeys. 
The  "  Round  Table "  is  a  malicious  invention. 
Men  of  Prince  zu  Eulenburg's  temperament  are 
found  frequently  in  all  walks  of  life.  Like  many 
obviously  minor  poets,  he  is  incurably  romantic.  It 
is  only  natural  that  he  should  have  been  attracted, 
as  the  moth  to  the  flame;  by  the  splendid  and  virile 
personality  of  the  monarch  whom  he  served  with 
mediaeval  devotion.  Count  Kuno  von  Moltke  is 
a  man  of  culture  in  the  sense  of  the  author  of 
Marius  the  Epicurean.  He  has  Nietzsche  and 
Goethe  at  his  finger-tips.  Harden  needlessly  and 
unjustly  dragged  his  name  through  the  mire, 
wrecking  his  happiness  to  no  purpose. 

Eulenburg's  case  is  still  undecided.  He  seems 
to  have  stumbled  over  a  breath — a  word — call 
it  perjury  if  you  will.  Harden's  clever  journal 
istic  machinations  have  spread  the  erroneous  im 
pression  that  he  has  proved  his  case:  he  hasn't. 
Eulenburg,  hounded  almost  to  death  by  Harden's 
sensational  persecution,  may  never  again  be  able 
to  speak  in  his  own  defense.  Harden,  however, 
stands  morally  convicted  of  treason  to  his  country, 
and,  incidentally,  to  his  own  scientific  convictions. 


48     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

He  has  passed  judgment  upon  himself.  His 
weekly  mental  acrobatics,  scorned  by  the  truly 
elect,  serve  to  amuse  only  the  intellectual  gallery. 
To  the  majority  of  the  German  public  he  is  no 
longer  a  martyr.  The  shield  of  the  Hohenzol- 
lern  gleams  brighter  than  ever.  His  absolute  inde 
pendence  of  irresponsible  advisers  and  his  political 
sagacity  are  no  longer  questioned. 

Like  Frederick  the  Great  in  his  time,  William 
II  is  the  cynosure  of  the  world.  His  seal  is  graven 
upon  the  Book  of  Life  perhaps  more  deeply  than 
Bismarck's.  Still,  there  must  be  bitterness  in  his 
heart  when  he  remembers  the  immediate  past.  I 
thought  of  it  in  Potsdam  when  I  retraced  the  steps 
of  his  great  progenitor. 

Potsdam,  the  Kaiser's  favorite  residence,  is  inti 
mately  associated  with  memories  of  Frederick  the 
Great.  It  means  much  more  to  the  German  than 
Washington's  headquarters  means  to  us.  Wash 
ington  had  many  headquarters.  His  appetite,  ap 
parently,  was  terrific.  He  seems  to  have  stopped 
at  every  road-house  between  New  York  and 
Philadelphia,  and  to  have  slept  in  innumerable 
places. 

The  picturesque  is  conspicuously  absent  in  our 
history.  We  haven't  much  of  a  history,  anyway. 
There  is  the  story  of  the  Cherry  Tree  and  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  a  couple  of  wars, 
and  Lincoln's  assassination.  For  me,  American 
history  begins  with  Poe,  not  with  Plymouth;  not 


"S.  M."  49 

with  the  Constitution,  but  with  Annabel  Lee. 
Everything  seems  too  near.  We  are  dreadfully 
unromantic.  Perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why  na 
tive  historical  art  fails  to  impress  us.  Who  would 
be  moved  by  the  statue  of  the  Father  of  his  Coun 
try,  standing  in  what  seems  to  be  a  bathing  suit,  on 
top  of  a  pole  in  the  Capital? 

Frederick  the  Great  and  Washington  were  con 
temporaries.  I  cannot  think  of  Washington  with 
out  smiling. 

In  Potsdam  I  felt  the  weight  of  the  centuries, 
and  that  a  wonderful  spirit  had  dwelt  there. 
The  little  house  where  lived  Voltaire,  his  dearest 
literary  friend,  somehow  gave  me  a  curious  thrill. 
And  with  a  chuckle  I  thought  of  the  cruel  things 
he  said  about  Frederick's  verse. 

I  mounted  the  terrace  that  leads  to  the  unpre 
tentious  hall  where  Frederick  himself  had  pre 
sided  over  his  minions,  smoking  tobacco  and  say 
ing  acute  things  in  French.  And  I  saw  in  the  twi 
light  the  pool  on  which  Frederick  had  set  his 
heart,  and  which  had  never  been  completed  in  his 
lifetime,  owing  to  the  miscalculations  of  a  stupid 
contractor.  And  there,  in  the  shadow  beyond,  was 
the  Historic  Mill,  whose  owner  had  flaunted  de 
fiance  in  the  face  of  the  King.  How  they  all 
hampered  him  in  little  things — the  philosopher, 
and  the  miller,  and  the  rascal  who  made  a  mess 
of  the  pool  I  How  like  their  descendants ! 

Night  had  fallen  over  the  trees.   Wistfully  the 


50     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

moon  smiled  from  above.  Through  the  green 
foliage  peered  the  pallid  faces  of  statues,  archers 
and  Ganymedes,  and  delicate  breasts  bathed  in 
moonlight.  Seven  little  tombstones  beckoned  and 
gleamed  from  afar.  '  These,"  remarked  my  com 
panion,  like  myself  an  admirer  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  "  these  are  the  graves  of  his  greyhounds. 
Despairing  of  men,  he  turned  for  solace  to  them." 

Frederick  had  ordained  in  his  will  that  the 
faithful  hounds  should  be  buried  at  his  side.  Even 
that  last  wish  was  denied  him.  To  me,  these 
graves  are  the  most  pathetic  things  in  the  world. 
In  the  history  of  sorrow  there  is  no  page  more  sor 
rowful  and  more  sweet.  I  wonder  if  the  Kaiser 
sometimes  thinks  of  Frederick  and  his  grey 
hounds? 

All  great  men  are  sad  at  heart.  I  can  imagine 
the  Kaiser,  wrapped  in  a  military  cloak,  standing 
there  of  a  night  and  evoking  in  spirit  the  seven 
little  ghosts  of  the  hounds.  Germany  has  forgot 
ten  how  in  a  moment  of  hysterical  agitation  she 
trod  his  love  underfoot.  William  II  is  great 
enough  to  forget.  But  surely,  sometimes,  like 
the  smart  of  an  old  wound,  the  memory  comes  to 
him  by  the  seven  little  graves  in  the  gardens  of 
Potsdam. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF   MILITARISM 

SOMEWHERE  in  Germany  there  is  a  warrant 
sworn  out  for  my  apprehension.  Somewhere  the 
Public  Prosecutor  peers  across  the  sea  with  a  spy 
glass.  The  German  Empire,  strangely  enough, 
regards  me  still  as  her  subject.  She  clings  to  me 
with  the  tenacity  of  a  woman.  I  think  she  accuses 
me  of  desertion.  A  uniform,  spick  and  span,  and 
with  brass  buttons,  is  waiting  for  me.  But  I  don't 
want  it.  I'd  rather  wear  my  blue  serge  suit.  And, 
of  course,  it's  all  a  mistake.  I  have  politely  in 
formed  Madame  that  I  am  an  American  citizen, 
and  that  she  can  not,  can  really  not,  count  upon  me. 

It  isn't  surprising  that  she  carries  my  name  on 
her  list.  It  seems  I  was  born  between  1884  and 
1885  in  tne  city  °f  Munich.  The  event  is  said  to 
have  occurred  on  New  Year's  Eve.  So,  in  a  way,  I 
have  fallen  between  two  stools.  Future  historians 
will  have  small  difficulty  in  proving  that  I  wasn't 
born  at  all.  I  don't  want  to  be  too  definite  about 
it.  The  lives  of  poets  should  be  delightfully 
vague.  The  greatest  poets  are  shrouded  in  mys 
tery.  The  author  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  it  seems, 

51 


52     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

never  existed.  And  seven  cities  vie  for  the  honor 
of  having  given  birth  to  a  person  named  Homer, 
who  is  alleged  to  have  written  the  Iliad. 

Let  two  continents  wrestle  for  me. 

Henceforth  shall  I  shun  the  detective  camera. 
Like  d'Annunzio,  I  shall  sleep  in  the  daytime.  I 
shall  endeavor  to  become  a  mythical  figure  like 
Bernard  Shaw.  All  the  elect  know  Bernard  Shaw 
doesn't  exist.  It  is  horribly  indiscreet  of  me  to 
say  so,  but  he  is  really  a  hoax.  He  invented  him 
self.  That  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  he  persist 
ently  refuses  to  startle  the  United  States  with  his 
enigmatical  presence.  All  the  world  loves  a  bluffer 
— at  least  in  America.  We  have  raised  humbug 
to  a  fine  art.  But  we  are  quick  to  discern  it.  Shaw 
is  afraid  we'd  find  out  that  he  is  merely  a  resus 
citated  epigram  of  the  late  Oscar  Wilde,  dropped 
by  mistake  in  a  volume  of  Marx. 

Already  an  aura  of  myths  surrounds  my  head 
with  a  nebulous  halo.  I  shall  be  a  legendary  fig 
ure  before  I  die.  That  is  the  reason  why  I  have 
deliberately  courted  a  bad  reputation.  It  is  a 
valuable  asset  for  a  poet  of  passion.  When  Swin 
burne  lost  it  by  moving  to  Putney  Hill  with  Mr. 
Watts  Dunton,  the  savor  went  out  of  his  song.  I 
am  convinced  I  shall  never  lose  my  evil  glamor. 
I  have  builded  too  well  for  that.  And  an  hun 
dred  hands  were  stretched  out  to  help  me.  Even 
if  I  weary,  my  friends,  I  feel  sure,  will  persist  in 
supporting  the  tottering  structure. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MILITARISM    53 

I  need  not  dwell  here  upon  the  now  historical 
fact  that  my  mother  is  a  native  of  California. 
Years  before  my  nativity  my  father  made  a  lec 
ture  tour  through  the  country.  The  date  of  my 
first  appearance  here  I  have  never  been  able  to 
verify  with  precision.  Who's  Who  places  it  at 
the  age  of  eleven.  And  through  all  the  elapsing 
years  some  German  magistrate's  scribe  has  consci 
entiously  traced  my  footprints.  Surely  the  mills 
of  the  Government  grind  exceeding  small ! 

One  night  I  was  dined  at  the  house  of  one  of 
the  Big  Wigs  of  the  German  War  Ministry.  My 
host,  cultured  and  genial,  like  all  German  officers, 
talked  interestingly  of  the  army.  I  asked  him 
whether  he  knew  of  any  general  philosophic  ex 
position  of  militarism.  He  gave  me  some  books 
on  the  subject,  which  I  subsequently  pondered 
with  care.  I  know  now  how  to  marshal  an  army, 
and  how  to  build  bridges  across  a  river,  besides 
various  strategic  devices.  But  my  knowledge  is 
theoretical,  like  a  young  poet's  knowledge  of  sin. 
And  I  nowhere  discovered  the  theory  of  militarism, 
the  philosophic  defense  of  the  thing.  After  all, 
nothing  that  exists  needs  a  defense.  Pope  was 
right  about  that. 

Of  course,  it  seems  preposterous  that  people 
should  be  drilled  to  riddle  each  other  with  bullets. 
I,  for  one,  don't  believe  in  it.  Life  to  me  is  a 
sacred  thing.  Besides,  I'd  be  afraid  to  handle  a 
gun.  I'd  rather  have  a  broken  heart  than  a  tooth- 


54     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

ache.  Still,  Good,  like  Evil,  inheres  in  all  things. 
I  agree  with  the  Persians  who  divided  the  cosmos 
equally  between  God  and  the  Devil.  We  must 
accept  both,  and  then  establish  our  personal  equi 
librium.  That,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  art  of  living. 
Militarism  is  not  wholly  the  work  of  the  Devil. 
I  cannot  picture  the  Goddess  of  Peace  without  a 
sword.  The  olive  branch  of  the  dove  should 
really  be  a  torpedo.  To  the  German  mind  no  such 
justification  is  needed.  It  is  as  natural  to  the  Ger 
man  to  serve  in  the  army  as  it  is  to  be  born;  and 
those  who  do  not  serve  might  as  well  never  have 
been  born. 

One  year's  compulsory  military  service  is  a  salu 
tary  experience.  Most  of  us  are  neglectful  of  ex 
ercise.  We  develop  certain  sets  of  muscles,  but 
there  is  little  general  training  even  among  college 
athletes.  Systematic  and  rigorous  physical  train 
ing  at  a  critical  age  is  worth  more  than  millions. 
The  Emperor's  service,  moreover,  keeps  the 
young  male,  if  not  out  of  mischief,  at  least  out  of 
marriage,  until  the  white  fires  of  adolescence  sober 
into  the  steady  warmth  of  connubial  affection. 
"  But,"  you  say,  "  time  is  money."  Twelve  vital 
months  are  canceled  from  your  accounts!  Yet  I 
should  hardly  consider  them  a  loss,  but  a  profit 
able  investment,  bearing  an  interest  of  one  thou 
sand  per  cent.  Medical  authorities  have  carefully 
calculated  that  compulsory  military  service  length 
ens  the  German  average  of  life  by  ten  years. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MILITARISM     55 

H.  G.  Wells,  in  one  of  his  yarns,  tells  of  a  Time 
Savings  Bank,  where  futile  hours  may  be  de 
posited,  to  be  drawn  upon  when  necessity  or  de 
light  prompts  us  to  lengthen  the  day.  I  have 
vainly  searched  in  financial  directories  for  this 
unique  institution.  Even  J.  P.  Morgan,  master  of 
destinies  and  of  millions,  cannot  purchase  a  single 
minute  from  Father  Time.  No  Wall  Street  oper 
ator  can  corner  this  market.  Military  service  is 
the  only  practical  Time  Savings  Bank  in  exist 
ence.  After  the  first  substantial  deposit,  the  di 
rectors  exact  small  periodic  payments  when  mili 
tary  maneuvers  mimic  the  ire  of  Mars.  Soon  ex 
penditures  cease  altogether,  but  at  the  end  of  your 
life — or  what  would  have  been  the  end — you 
can  live  on  the  interest. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Prussian  schoolmaster 
won  the  battles  of  Frederick  the  Great.  The 
German  army  to-day  is  a  national  school.  Every 
company  is  a  school  class,  with  recruits  as  pupils, 
and  officers  as  instructors.  The  officers,  in  turn, 
receive  instruction  from  their  superiors,  and  the 
War  Academy  in  Berlin  furnishes,  so  to  speak, 
special  post-graduate  courses  in  warfare.  Mili 
tary  service  is  said  to  increase  the  efficiency  of  the 
young  German  by  twenty-five  per  cent.  Rustic 
swains  return  to  their  homes  with  new  ideas. 
They  learn  to  apply  themselves  systematically. 
They  learn  manners,  respect  for  their  intellectual 
betters.  And,  incidentally,  also,  the  use  of  soap. 


5  6      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

The  young  soldier  is  a  powerful  factor  in  Ger 
man  aesthetics.  He  is  a  splash  of  color  on  the 
gray  face  of  the  world.  His  glittering  uniform 
and  his  bluish  cloak,  artistically  lined  with  red,  are 
an  eloquent  plea  against  insipid  civilian  Fashion, 
which  has  banished  gaiety  in  masculine  attire  to 
the  comic  opera  stage.  There  is  nobility  in  his 
carriage.  His  eyes  flash  fire.  He  is  handsome, 
being  healthy,  young,  and,  in  the  beginning  at 
least,  clean-shaven. 

There  is  something  distinctly  animalic  in 
bearded  faces.  Perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why 
some  women  succumb  to  their  spell.  The  beast  in 
the  female  responds  to  the  simian  reminiscence — 
atavistic,  no  doubt — in  the  male.  To  me,  a 
bearded  man  suggests  the  ancient  Assyrian.  The 
dust  of  the  ages  seems  to  nestle  in  the  hirsute  pro 
jection.  I  would  not  be  at  all  surprised  if  a  scar- 
abasus,  startled  at  a  touch,  were  to  creep  from  its 
somber  recesses.  Young  men  should  shave  clean. 
Later,  when  sin  and  sorrow  have  dug  holes  in 
their  cheeks  and  the  years  have  distorted  their 
lips,  it  is  perhaps  well  that  they  should  hide 
their  wasted  loveliness  under  a  growth  of  hair. 

I  have  no  aesthetic  objection  to  flowing  beards 
in  old  men,  and  to  a  mustache  in  a  father.  I 
couldn't  imagine  my  own  father  without  one. 
The  well  developed  mustache  may  epitomize  mas 
culine  maturity  and  completeness.  But  the  frag 
mentary,  tooth-brush-like  growth  many  young 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MILITARISM     57 

Germans  affect  on  their  upper  lip  is  perfectly 
hideous.  A  young  German  teacher  confided  to 
me  that  he  had  grown  a  beard  in  order  to  impress 
his  pupils  with  a  sense  of  his  dignity.  He  has  the 
face  of  a  cherub,  yet  he  makes  himself  look  like 
a  goat! 

Soldiers  are  garrisoned,  as  a  rule,  far  from 
their  homes.  Regiments  are  frequently  shifted. 
The  soldier  thus  comes  in  touch  with  various  parts 
of  the  country.  Everywhere  he  acquires  new 
knowledge.  He  learns  to  see  his  own  com 
munity  in  its  proper  perspective.  The  oneness  of 
the  Fatherland  dawns  upon  him.  It  is  an  object- 
lesson  in  patriotism. 

In  the  past,  at  least,  maneuvers  were  held  al 
ternately  in  various  spots  of  the  country  with 
unavowed  ethnic  intentions.  Some  villages,  far 
from  the  high  road,  were  degenerating.  Inter 
marriages  between  relatives  were  the  rule. 
Hydrocephalous  children  were  not  infrequent. 
The  presence  of  the  soldiers  injected  new  blood 
into  the  shriveled  veins  of  the  hamlet.  The  stork 
followed  frequently.  Marriages  sometimes. 
"  Nice  "  people  won't  approve  of  this.  But  it  is 
defensible  from  the  viewpoint  of  racial  ethics.  Na 
ture  isn't  moral,  and  she  has  a  trick  of  not  waiting 
for  magisterial  permits. 

The  modern  railway  has  largely  supplanted  the 
necessity  for  this  system,  but  it  is  still  a  factor  in 
racial  development.  Remember  that  all  able- 


58      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

bodied  young  men  are  pressed  into  service,  and 
that  they  are  scattered  all  over  the  country.  The 
glad  blood  leaps  in  their  veins.  Courtships  are 
spun  everywhere.  Many  return  to  wed  where 
they  wooed.  It  is  fascinating  to  reflect  how  the 
administrative  process  that  carries  young  manhood 
from  province  to  province  furnishes  a  striking 
parallel  to  the  function  of  the  wind,  love-courier 
from  garden  to  garden  in  the  vegetable  domain. 

In  the  ranks  of  the  officers,  aristocratic  titles 
prevail.  In  some  regiments  only  blue  blood  is  ac 
cepted  at  par.  The  growing  power  of  the  bour 
geoisie,  however,  is  shattering  this  feudal  barrier. 
I  am  not  democratic,  and  I  cannot  say  that  I  hail 
the  change  with  delight.  There  is  much  to  be  said 
for  blue  blood,  and  old  titles,  and  families  with 
traditions.  We  estimate  a  horse  by  its  pedigree, 
and  we  value  the  family  tree  of  a  puppy-dog.  The 
same  laws  of  heredity  and  evolution  surely  apply 
to  humans.  Nobility  is  the  pillar  of  state  and 
throne.  What  I  have  said  of  the  institution  of 
monarchy  applies  with  equal  force  to  the  noble. 
His  subsistence  to-day  is  incongruous.  But  life 
itself  is  pregnant  with  contradictions. 

The  aristocrat,  no  doubt,  frequently  falls  short 
of  his  standards.  But  his  standards  are  fine.  Not 
long  ago,  a  cousin  of  mine,  a  young  lieutenant, 
scion  of  one  of  the  oldest  families  in  the  country, 
committed  suicide  because  his  superior  officer  had 
censured  him  for  some  trivial  misunderstanding. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MILITARISM    59 

His  sense  of  honor  was  so  acutely  developed  that 
a  word  of  disapprobation  was  a  death-warrant. 
Foolish,  perhaps.  The  boy  was  high-strung,  un 
balanced. 

Recently  an  American  officer  was  tried  before 
a  court-martial  for  a  flagrantly  dishonorable  act. 
The  sentence  passed  upon  him,  being  absurdly 
light,  was  subsequently  overturned  by  the  com- 
mander-in-chief.  A  mistaken  sense  of  esprit  de 
corps  seems  to  have  blinded  his  judges.  What 
ever  their  motives,  whose  code  of  honor  was 
higher,  theirs  or  the  dead  lad's?  To  whom  would 
we  rather  entrust  the  safety  of  a  country? 

The  incident,  presumably,  is  not  symptomatic. 
Our  officers,  I  am  convinced,  are  as  honorable  as 
any.  In  Germany,  however,  certain  canons  of 
honor  are  established  immutably.  The  duel  is 
partly  responsible  for  the  German  rigor,  barbar 
ous  at  times,  in  matters  relating  to  honor.  It  is 
not  a  purely  military  institution,  but  a  practice 
sanctioned  by  academic  tradition.  Insult  is  not 
passed  over  lightly  among  Germans.  We  freely 
hurl,  at  least  in  print,  insulting  epithets  at  each 
other.  We  may  not  blacken  a  person's  eye,  but 
we  blacken  his  reputation.  Yet  every  time  we  call 
a  public  servant  a  thief  or  a  liar,  the  moral  stand 
ard  is  lowered.  If  the  president  is  a  liar  and  the 
governor  a  thief,  crime  seems  innocuous.  Through 
constant  reiteration,  first  the  word,  then  the  thing 
itself,  impresses  us  more  lightly.  Our  libel  laws 


60     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

are  inefficient.  The  use  of  the  fist  is  unsatisfactory, 
especially  as  moral  heroes  are  apt  to  be  under 
sized.  A  sword  scratch  is  wildly  romantic;  a 
bloody  nose  isn't. 

The  army,  in  spite  of  the  preference  given  in 
some  regiments  to  titled  officers,  is  a  republican 
institution.  It  is  more  democratic  than  Bebel. 
There  is  nothing  more  democratic.  Military  ser 
vice,  being  incumbent  upon  all,  temporarily  levels 
distinctions  of  caste.  Once  they  wear  "  the  Em 
peror's  coat,"  prince  and  peasant  are  equals.  Even 
princes  of  the  blood  are  not  spared  the  tribula 
tions  of  the  poorest  lieutenant.  Any  tendency  to 
uppishness  is  promptly  suppressed. 

Where  officers  and  privates  belong  to  the  same 
class,  cordial  relations  are  irreconcilable  with  eti 
quette.  The  German  officer  can  afford  to  make 
himself  democratic,  because  he  is  not,  so  to  speak, 
one  of  the  common  people.  He  cannot  lose  caste 
socially  by  mixing  with  them  as  comrades.  I  re 
member  walking  down  Unter  den  Linden  with  my 
military  friend.  Every  time  a  common  soldier 
saluted,  and  it  happened  with  embarrassing  fre 
quency,  he  courteously  returned  the  salute.  He 
had  instructed  his  subordinate  officers  to  be  equally 
attentive.  And  every  salute  was  a  renewed  asser 
tion  of  the  unity  of  the  grandiose  machinery  in 
which  general  and  private,  each  in  his  own  way, 
are  of  equal  importance. 

I  am  an  individualist.     Yet  there  are  moments 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  MILITARISM    61 

when  it  is  sweet  to  grow  out  of  the  shell  of  self. 
There  is,  perhaps,  dangerous  intoxication  in 
crowds;  to  be  swayed  by  the  common  impulse 
when  the  mysterious  force  psychologists  call 
"  mass  suggestion  "  sweeps  through  the  channels 
of  the  brain,  breaking  the  flood-gates  of  mental 
reserve.  Such  must  be  the  soldier's  experience  in 
war  or  some  great  maneuver.  Think  of  a  million 
young  souls  swearing  fealty  to  one  flag,  made  one 
by  the  ties  of  comradeship  and  obedience,  and  a 
new  sense  of  brotherhood  born  of  common  experi 
ence! 

All  the  vitality  of  the  nation  is  there.  Passion 
and  youth,  brawn  and  brain,  are  enthralled  by  one 
dominant  purpose.  How  irresistible  is  this 
phalanx!  What  an  immense  force!  What 
strange  hysteria !  Only  Walt  Whitman  could  de 
pict  such  emotions,  cosmic  and  sensuous.  Even 
the  most  confirmed  egotist  forgets  his  subjective 
existence.  His  heart  for  the  nonce  beats  in  unison 
with  the  world's.  He  is  one  with  the  race  and  the 
earth.  Earth-emotions,  Titanic  and  terrifying, 
throb  in  his  veins.  He  can  perform  miracles  of 
endurance  and  valor. 

Henceforth,  if  his  country  calls,  he  will  blindly 
follow  her  summons.  He  will  love  the  Father 
land  with  a  love  intensely  personal,  as  one  loves  a 
woman.  He  has  experienced  an  emotion  deeper 
than  patriotism,  fiercer  than  lust.  Future  and  past 
have  met  in  one  glance.  A  subtle  change  is 


62     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

wrought  within  his  being.  He  is  the  citizen  trans 
figured.  Never  again  will  he  be  quite  what  he 
has  been — like  a  child  who,  having  strayed  in 
the  wold,  has  had  converse  with  fairies.  Like 
the  lover  to  whom  passion  has  revealed  its  ulti 
mate  secret.  Like  the  prophet  who  has  seen  ,God 
in  a  bush. 


CHAPTER  VI 

INSPIRED   BUREAUCRACY 

GERMANY  is  an  inspired  bureaucracy.  Her  real 
ruler  is  the  bureaucrat.  His  impress  is  every 
where.  We  generally  associate  the  bureaucrat 
with  the  pedant.  Frenchmen  run  to  lechery.  Am 
ericans  incline  to  graft.  Pedantry  is  the  German 
vice.  It  might  have  become  the  national  poison, 
had  not  William  II  injected  the  potent  antidote  of 
his  individualism  into  the  body  politic.  The  men 
at  the  helm  of  German  affairs  to-day  have  main 
tained  the  Prussian  tradition  of  strict  adherence 
to  duty.  But  their  horizon  has  widened.  Sus 
tained,  not  ossified  by  routine,  they  follow  the  star 
of  the  new. 

I  have  met  four  Ministers  of  State,  four  Am 
bassadors,  one  sovereign  Burgomaster,  "  Excel 
lencies  "  by  the  score,  and  Privy  Councilors  in 
numerable.  Everywhere  I  found  alertness  and 
life.  There  was,  on  the  whole,  little  "  red  tape." 
If  we  elect  a  vital  personality  to  office,  and  we 
feel  that  for  once  we  have  a  man,  not  a  marion 
ette,  we  bubble  over  with  enthusiasm  and  are  loath 
to  lose  him  even  temporarily  in  the  African  jungle. 

63 


64     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

In  Germany  every  bureau  has  its  Roosevelt.  Few 
but  the  Inner  Circle  know  their  names.  They 
claim  no  public  credit  for  their  achievements. 
Unadvertised  and  unsung,  they  plod  away  at  their 
desks.  But  their  plans  are  accomplished,  their 
dreams  projected. 

A  man  of  this  type,  a  mind  fascinatingly  radio 
active,  was  the  late  Friedrich  AlthofL  The  Min 
istry  of  Culture,  to  render  the  spirit,  not  the  let 
ter,  of  the  original  term,  was  the  center  of  his 
ceaseless  radiation.  Strenuous,  autocratic,  he 
ruled  with  an  iron  rod.  It  is  said  that  the  Kaiser 
himself  made  concessions  to  him  that  he  would  not 
have  made  to  a  fellow-sovereign.  There  was  no 
grandiose  scheme  of  reform  in  which  he  was  not 
a  participant.  No  vital  idea  was  left  orphaned 
and  begging  on  the  steps  of  his  office.  In  his 
bureau  the  most  vital  educational  idea  of  the  cen 
tury,  the  international  exchange  of  intellectual 
commodities,  stepped  full-fledged  from  a  profes 
sional  cerebrum.  Althoff  adopted  the  waif;  he 
nourished  it  and  sustained  it.  Who  was  its  father 
we  shall  never  know.  I  am  personally  acquainted 
with  at  least  four  claimants  to  that  distinction. 
If  I  give  the  palm  to  any  I  shall  mortally  offend 
the  rest. 

Applying  the  Napoleonic  code,  let  us  not,  there 
fore,  inquire  into  the  paternite.  It  was  Althoff, 
at  any  rate,  who  built  the  bridge  for  the 
foundling  across  the  Atlantic.  Every  professor 


INSPIRED  BUREAUCRACY          65 

traversing  the  ocean  is  a  living  monument  to  this 
remarkable  man. 

Yet,  so  little  known  was  this  inspired  bureau 
crat  outside  of  his  circle  that  his  death  passed 
unnoticed  by  the  American  press.  The  first  Kaiser 
Wilhelm  Professor,  John  W.  Burgess,  had  not 
heard  of  the  occurrence  until  he  received  a  letter 
from  a  mutual  friend. 

Althoff's  spirit  still  hovers  over  the  ministry,  as 
Bismarck's  over  the  Foreign  Office.  If  Bismarck 
consolidated  his  country's  political  strength,  it  re 
mains  Althoff's  distinction  to  have  conquered  the 
New  World  intellectually;  at  least,  to  have  opened 
to  the  German  mind  the  citadels  of  our  universi 
ties,  where  formerly  only  brave  pioneers  like 
Hugo  Mu'nsterberg  and  Kuno  Francke  had 
gained  isolated  footholds.  Conquests  of  peace, 
unlike  conquests  of  war,  are  of  mutual  benefit  to 
conqueror  and  vanquished,  and  the  gates  of  Ger 
man  universities  swing  graciously  open  to  invaders 
from  the  American  side.  Althoff's  spirit  abides  in 
the  American  Institute  founded  after  his  death  in 
the  capital  of  the  Kaiser.  Surely  bureaucracy  has 
its  victories,  and  education  its  Bismarcks. 

Our  Commissioner  of  Education,  our  nearest 
approach  to  the  German  Kultusminister,  is  prac 
tically  powerless.  His  German  colleague  has  a 
firm  grip  on  matters  of  religion,  education  and  art. 
In  the  body  politic  the  Ministry  of  Culture  may  be 
compared  with  the  soul.  The  amount  of  work 


66     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

transacted  in  the  humble  building  situated,  if  I 
rightly  remember,  at  the  intersection  of  the  Wil- 
helmstrasse  and  Unter  den  Linden,  is  hardly 
credible.  From  morning  until  night  the  ante 
rooms  are  crowded  with  foreign  visitors  and  pro 
fessorial  aspirants.  I  have  seen  the  Man  Higher 
Up  still  at  work  at  half-past  nine  in  the  evening. 
His  bureau  is  an  intellectual  telephone-central 
where  all  the  wires  converge.  If  we  had  a  new 
idea,  we  should  never  dream  of  inviting  the  co 
operation  of  a  government  official.  In  Germany 
all  new  ideas  are  submitted  to  official  sanction,  and 
vital  ideas  are  not  often  rejected. 

The  German  professor  receives  his  inspiration 
largely  from  the  Minister  of  Culture.  His  position 
is  curiously  hybrid.  He  is  part  of  the  bureaucratic 
system,  yet  intellectually  independent.  Those  who 
direct  affairs  at  the  Ministry  are  hidden  from 
public  sight.  The  professor,  however,  as  the  Man 
Higher  Up  explained  to  me,  stands  between  them 
and  the  world.  The  modern  German  professor 
has  nothing  in  common  with  the  type  made  familiar 
to  all  through  the  Fliegende  Blatter.  He  is  a 
practical  man,  alive  to  the  call  of  the  age.  There 
is  nothing  of  the  academic  fossil  about  him.  He 
is  human,  ambitious,  and  often  a  man  of  brilliant 
intellectual  attainment.  We  labor  under  the  im 
pression  that  his  remuneration  is  scant.  We  cer 
tainly  underpay  our  professors.  The  income  of  the 
German  professor  I  understand  to  be  princely  com- 


INSPIRED  BUREAUCRACY          67 

pared  with  that  of  his  American  compeer.  In  ad 
dition  to  his  salary,  he  receives  a  certain  tithe  from 
the  students  attending  his  lectures.  Popular  lec 
turers  are  known  thus  to  have  increased  their 
stipends  by  from  forty  to  fifty  thousand  marks  in 
a  single  year.  They  are  officers  in  that  army  of 
culture  of  which  the  Kultusminister  is  the  com- 
mander-in-chief. 

Not  far  from  the  Kultus minis terium  we  find 
the  Foreign  Office.  The  cluster  of  buildings  har 
boring  this  department  may  fitly  be  likened  to  the 
brain  in  the  anatomy  of  the  State.  Here  are  con 
ceived  the  political  scores,  which  through  the  joint 
instrumentation  of  the  Kaiser  and  his  advisers  have 
made  Germany  the  bandmaster  in  the  Concert  of 
Nations.  It  is  not  often  that  a  false  note  is 
sounded.  German  diplomacy  frequently  com 
bines,  with  the  genius  of  Richard  Strauss,  appar 
ent  dissonances  into  harmonies  effective  and  start 
ling.  I  have  stated  before  that,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  super-wise,  the  Emperor's  interview  in  the 
London  Telegraph  was  a  brilliant  stroke  of  diplo 
macy  to  be  justified  by  future  events.  At  the  same 
time,  there  seems  no  doubt  that  bungling  was  not 
absent  from  the  matter.  The  fact  in  the  case  is 
that  the  fateful  manuscript  was  slipped  by  mistake 
into  the  wrong  portfolio.  Some  one  was  careless, 
one  cog  was  out  of  place,  and  the  whole  machinery 
came  apparently  to  a  standstill.  Not  because  it 
was  poorly  organized,  but  because  it  was  so  splen- 


'68      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

didly  organized.  In  such  an  exquisite  machine, 
the  slightest  break  is  fatal. 

The  Foreign  Office  is  almost  rustic  in  its  trap 
pings.  The  sofas  and  carpets  in  the  reception- 
room  are  positively  shabby.  No  one  who  has  ever 
seen  the  inside  of  the  Foreign  Office  can  maintain 
that  Germany  is  not  economical.  A  dentist's  wait 
ing-room  is  Oriental  in  luxury  by  comparison. 
Still  there  is  a  certain  charm  in  Imagining  that 
perhaps  it  was  the  ashes  from  Bismarck's  pipe  that 
burned  this  hole  in  the  carpet;  that  his  Titanic 
back  rubbed  the  bloom  from  that  couch.  No 
stenographer  is  employed  in  the  political  depart 
ment.  Never  is  the  homely  click  of  the  typewriter 
heard!  In  Downing  Street  the  secretaries  dictate 
their  letters  into  the  ear  of  the  phonograph;  in 
the  Wilhelmstrasse  high  officials  themselves  write 
their  letters  out  in  long-hand.  Secrecy  is  bought 
at  the  cost  of  convenience.  Quarters  are  crowded. 
Of  comfort,  of  elegance,  no  trace.  I  feel  that  I 
could  not  work  in  such  a  place  unless  I  were  at 
least  a  privy  councilor.  If  I  were,  surroundings 
wouldn't  matter.  I  wouldn't  lose  my  self-respect 
even  in  the  humblest  abode,  supplied  by  a  par 
simonious  government,  because,  after  all,  I  would 
myself  be  part  of  that  government. 

I  wonder  if  such  considerations  account  for  the 
German  system  of  titles?  There  is  to  us  some 
thing  funny  in  calling  everybody  by  his  bureau 
cratic  title,  because  we  are  ignorant  of  the  eco- 


INSPIRED  BUREAUCRACY          69 

nomic,  ethical,  aesthetic  and  social  function  of  the 
thing.  The  Geheimrat,  or  Privy  Councilor,  and 
his  varieties,  people  half  the  fashionable  streets 
of  Berlin.  He  is  easily  recognizable  by  his  long 
frock  coat,  and  the  distinction  with  which  he  car 
ries  a  portfolio  under  his  arm.  Some  privy  coun 
cilors  are  apparently  purely  imaginary  creatures. 
For  a  distinction  seems  to  be  made  between 
"  real  "  and  "  unreal  "  privy  councilors.  The  for 
mer,  the  "  zvirkliche"  has  entered  the  bureaucratic 
heaven;  the  mere  privy  councilor,  like  a  soul  un 
born,  hovers  in  the  titular  limbo.  "  Real "  privy 
councilors  are  addressed  "  Your  Excellency,"  a 
title  also  bestowed  upon  high  military  officials, 
ambassadors  and  ministers.  Rectors  of  universi 
ties  and  burgomasters  of  sovereign  cities  are 
called  "  Your  Magnificence." 

Even  outside  the  sphere  of  bureaucracy,  bureau 
cratic  customs  prevail.  Social  life  is  impregnated 
with  its  spirit.  In  addressing  a  person  you  label 
him.  The  nightwatchman  is  Mr.  Night  Watch 
man.  His  wife  is  referred  to  as  Mrs.  Night 
Watchman.  A  Colonel's  wife  is  Mrs.  Colonel. 
A  doctor's  wife  Mrs.  Doctor,  although  ladies  who 
have  earned  the  title  object  to  its  use  by  females 
not  so  distinguished.  The  title,  it  seems,  estab 
lishes  a  communion  between  husband  and  wife, 
which  even  divorce  cannot  sever.  I  know  of  a  lady 
who,  when  she  parted  from  her  husband,  was  Mrs. 
Lieutenant.  When  the  rank  of  Colonel  was  ac- 


70     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

corded  to  him,  she  rose  to  the  occasion.  And  I 
have  at  this  moment  in  my  possession  her  visiting 
card  with  the  legend:  "  Mrs.  General,  Excellency." 

It's  rather  hard  at  first  to  kowtow  symbolically 
every  time  you  open  your  mouth,  if  you  are  a  title- 
less  stranger.  Which  reminds  me  of  the  young 
American  who  registered  as  Elector  of  New  York, 
and  was  received  everywhere  like  a  prince.  My 
father  happens  to  be  president  of  various  societies; 
he  was  introduced  consequently  to  a  lot  of  excel 
lencies  as  "  Mr.  President."  He  never  got  rid  of 
the  title.  I  am  vice  president  of  a  publishing  com 
pany,  and  I  have  firmly  made  up  my  mind  to  adopt 
that  title  the  next  time  I  travel  abroad.  The 
porter  will  make  innumerable  genuflections  as  I 
enter  the  hotel,  and  there  will  be  an  awesome 
catch  in  the  chambermaid's  voice  as  she  brings  me 
the  coffee. 

Besides,  as  I  have  said,  the  subject  has  a  dis 
tinctly  economic  aspect.  Germany  pays  her  offi 
cials  better  than  we  do.  But  she  cannot  afford  to 
pay  them  nearly  enough,  considering  that  her  most 
brilliant  men  enter  her  service.  In  fact,  money 
alone  could  not  pay  them.  And  being  an  econom 
ical  lady,  she  compensates  them  with  titles  and 
decorations.  It  is  cheaper  to  endow  an  official 
with  a  high  title  than  to  double  his  salary. 
The  title,  more  than  any  amount  of  money,  deter 
mines  his  social  pre-eminence.  If  he  be  a  poor 
man,  no  one  expects  lavish  entertainments  of  him. 


INSPIRED  BUREAUCRACY          71 

The  millionaire  gladly  trots  up  four  flights  to  the 
humble  dwelling  of  the  Herr  Geheimrat.  And  a 
cup  of  tea  prepared  in  His  Excellency's  kitchen 
goes  to  the  head  of  the  social  climber  like  Asti 
Spumanti.  When  a  German  officer  in  moderate 
circumstances  invites  you  to  dinner,  he  doesn't  at 
tempt  to  show  off.  His  rank  insures  his  social 
standing;  he  need  not  buy  your  respect  with  truf 
fles,  or  cannonade  the  castle  of  caste  with  a  battery 
of  champagne  pops.  These  explanations  were 
given  me  by  a  Minister  of  State  whose  honorable 
poverty  exemplified  the  beauty  of  the  system  he 
expounded. 

A  man  who  wears  the  ribbon  of  the  Legion 
of  Honor  will  think  twice  before  he  participates 
in  a  street  brawl.  The  bearer  of  a  distinguished 
title  will  try  to  live  up  to  that  title.  His  social 
privileges  entail  social  duties.  German  officers  are 
not  allowed  to  go  out  in  civilian  garb.  The  uni 
form  alone  affords  moral  protection.  Places  of 
evil  association  are  barred  to  them.  Their  iden 
tity  can  be  ascertained  at  a  glance.  Like  the  alder 
man  in  a  small  town,  they've  got  to  be  good.  And 
there  is  always  a  stimulus  in  the  hope  of  promo 
tion:  special  merit  receives  special  and  visible 
recognition.  The  philanthropist's  energy  will  be 
redoubled,  if  he  knows  that  the  eyes  of  his  sov 
ereign  are  resting  upon  him,  and  that  he  need  not 
wait  for  the  next  world  before  a  reward  comes  to 
him  in  the  shape  of  some  titular  honor.  We  re- 


72      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

ward  our  millionaire  philanthropists  by  cracking 
jokes  at  their  expense.  The  comic  press  is  their 
Hall  of  Fame.  I  am  sure  the  fear  of  ridicule  has 
tightened  the  purse-strings  of  many  a  bashful  Car 
negie.  That  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  I,  at  any 
rate,  have  never  founded  a  museum. 

The  public  is  a  doubting  Thomas,  and  reputa 
tion  in  art  and  science  is  an  indeterminable  factor. 
A  title,  a  decoration,  assays  a  man's  worth. 
American  society  is  afraid  to  receive  the  artist,  and 
ignores  the  scholar.  Germany  lends  the  title  of 
"  professor "  to  distinguished  artists,  and,  of 
course,  to  distinguished  scientists.  That  is  their 
passport.  Great  artists  may  dispense  with  it. 
Men  of  Menzel's  stamp  need  no  passport  beyond 
that  of  genius.  Still  their  path  is  made  smoother 
thereby.  They  are  in  less  danger  of  being  snubbed 
by  inferiors.  And,  of  course,  in  Germany,  a  title 
is  a  thing  of  very  substantial  value.  A  man  who 
assumes  a  title  he  has  not  earned  is  a  thief,  and  is 
punished  accordingly.  Professors  of  pedicure  and 
clairvoyance  are  unknown  in  Berlin.  Titles,  while 
ungrudgingly  given  to  those  who  have  a  right  to 
them,  are  sternly  denied  to  fakirs. 

We  may  regard  inherited  titles  as  absurd,  but 
titles  earned  by  service  are  certainly  sensible,  one 
may  even  say,  democratic.  It's  the  one  chance  of 
the  burgher  to  get  even  with  the  nobility.  While 
the  system  establishes  a  differential  social  tariff,  it 
creates  no  obstacle  that  cannot  be  overcome  by 


INSPIRED  BUREAUCRACY          73 

merit.  And  as  the  soldier's  uniform  lends  patches 
of  color  to  the  street,  the  titles  devised  by  bureau 
cracy  brighten  the  salon.  It's  much  more  inter 
esting  to  talk  to  a  circle  of  privy  councilors  than 
to  be  surrounded  by  a  lot  of  Mr.  Smiths  and  Mrs. 
Somebodys.  I  don't  blame  our  heiresses  for  want 
ing  to  marry  men  of  position  and  title.  A  simple 
baron  sheds  some  luster  on  social  functions,  and  it 
is  incredible  what  sparkle  the  presence  of  an  Ex 
cellency  lends  to  a  lady's  "  At  Home." 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   MORALS  OF  EUROPE 

LADIES  and  gentlemen,  who  have  followed  me 
so  far,  are  you  not  astounded  at  my  conservatism? 
I  am.  I  described  myself  once  as  a  conservative 
Anarchist.  I  am  afraid  there  is  little  of  the  An 
archist  in  my  composition  to-day.  Europe  has 
transformed  and  converted  me.  I  have  set  my 
face  toward  order.  I  fear  that  a  suspicion  of  re 
spectability  always  lurked  in  my  heart.  Of 
course,  people  will  never  believe  me.  They 
imagine  that  I  live  the  life  of  an  aesthetic  tramp, 
break  up  homes,  and  am  continually  in  debt, 
merely  because  my  name  is  attached  to  certain 
passional  studies.  A  bank  account,  it  seems,  is  ir 
reconcilable  with  a  poet  of  passion. 

Dear  souls,  I  am  really  a  Philistine.  I  am  scru 
pulously  honest,  and  as  for  wild  oats,  I  have  never 
sown  them.  Poets,  like  the  comets,  those  celestial 
Bohemians,  are  privileged  to  deviate  from  their 
orbits.  My  actions  may  at  times  contradict  my 
words.  Do  not,  therefore,  question  my  sincerity. 
I  certainly  must  refuse  to  live  up  to  all  the  things 
I  am  preaching.  At  the  present,  however,  I  be- 

74 


THE  MORALS  OF  EUROPE         75 

lieve  in  them.  I  have  forsaken  my  radical  affilia 
tions.  I  have  returned  to  the  fold.  But,  alas,  no 
fatted  calf  is  in  sight.  I  made  more  money  when 
I  was  supposed  to  be  wicked. 

Having  thus  disposed  of  my  morals,  let  us  now 
examine  the  morals  of  Europe.  I  see  a  look  of 
quickened  interest  in  your  eyes.  You  will  be  ter 
ribly  disappointed.  In  America  we  are  accus 
tomed  to  associate  morality  pre-eminently  with 
sex.  Don  Juan  is  to  us  the  devil  incarnate.  We 
regard  a  sexually  continent  man  as  a  moral  man. 
We  have  no  objection  to  his  "  correcting  luck  "  in 
financial  affairs.  Measured  by  American  standards 
Atys  must  have  been  a  paragon  of  Virtue.  And 
the  Sultan,  too,  is  surrounded  by  virtuous  men. 

Sex  has  really  nothing  to  do  with  morals.  It 
belongs  to  the  sphere  of  passion;  being  natural,  it 
is  unmoral.  Loving,  like  dining,  is  not  an  ethical 
function.  The  eunuch  may  be  moral  or  immoral. 
The  Mormon  likewise.  There  is  no  justification 
for  confusing  ethical  problems  with  physiological 
problems.  Love  is  never  immoral,  because  it 
necessarily  implies  mutual  consent.  Only  where 
that  is  absent,  an  erotic  question  becomes  an  ethical 
question.  Within  the  Golden  Rule  no  amorous 
experience  can  possibly  be  immoral.  Thus,  ex 
cept  in  loveless  marriages  or  in  rape,  ethical  prob 
lems  rarely  arise  in  the  realm  of  passion.  I  shall 
not,  therefore,  discuss  Europe's  sexual  morality 
under  this  heading. 


76      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

We,  in  America,  regard  Europe  as  immoral  be 
cause  of  a  curious  notion  that  sex,  in  itself,  is  im 
moral.  With  the  elimination  of  the  sexual  factor, 
the  morals  of  Europe  are  superior  to  ours.  The 
European's  integrity  in  business,  his  sense  of  so 
cial  duty,  and  his  firm  adherence  to  an  intangible 
code  of  professional  honor,  thrown  against  our 
American  background,  endow  him  with  the  halo 
of  saintship.  I  wonder  if  the  insistence  on  ethical 
and  religious  training  abroad  in  public  schools  is 
not,  like  militarism,  a  blessing  in  disguise. 

We  abhor  the  idea  of  injecting  religious 
instruction  into  our  educational  system,  al 
though,  absurdly  enough,  we  approve  of  indis 
criminate  Bible-readings  in  schools,  irrespective  of 
the  children's  religious  persuasions,  and  expect  even 
the  atheist  to  swear  in  court  on  the  Book. 

You  are  a  church-goer  presumably.  But  I  am 
sure  your  religious  notions  are  hazy.  Perhaps 
you  go  to  church  as  to  a  social  function.  If  you 
had  been  brought  up  in  Germany  you  would 
know  exactly  what  you  believed  and  what  you  did 
not  believe.  For  one  thing,  you  would  have  had 
systematic  religious  training  in  school.  And  you 
would  have  learned  to  apply  your  religion  daily, 
as  you  apply  the  multiplication  table.  Both  Gen 
tile  and  Jew  are  instructed  by  special  teachers  of 
their  own  faith  in  the  elements  of  their  creed,  as 
they  are  instructed  in  geography  and  spelling. 
When  they  grow  up  they  will  have  to  pay  taxes 


THE  MORALS  OF  EUROPE         77 

In  support  of  the  State  Church  or  the  Synagogue, 
unless  they  formally  declare  their  dissent  from  the 
faith.  They  will  not  take  this  step  without  seri 
ous  reflection.  They  are  thus  forced  to  think 
clearly  for  themselves.  That  may  ultimately  blast 
the  Rock  of  Ages  with  intellectual  dynamite,  but 
at  least  they  will  know  for  what  it  stands. 

American  children  are  often  curiously  ignorant 
of  even  the  most  beautiful  of  Biblical  stories, 
things  they  should  know  as  matters  of  general  cul 
ture.  Already  the  Sunday  School  despairs  of 
itself.  It  reaches  only  a  comparatively  small  per 
centage  of  children.  It  cannot  hammer  religion 
into  them  as  a  part  of  their  general  education.  It 
is  an  outside  thing  in  school.  And  an  outside  thing 
it  remains  in  life.  We  take  our  religion  on  Sun 
days  as  one  takes  medicine.  If  conscience  calls 
during  business  hours,  we  aren't  in.  Sporadically, 
however,  we  experience  religion  with  hysterical 
intensity.  The  corruptionist  suddenly  discovers 
that  he  is  wicked,  and,  like  the  newly-converted 
savage,  he  suffers  from  violent  ethical  cramps. 
With  this  difference:  the  savage,  in  sudden  re 
ligious  fervor,  may  inflict  harikari  upon  himself; 
the  reformed  American  millionaire  vents  his  re 
ligion  on  others.  He  plays  Jack  the  Ripper  to 
Personal  Liberty.  He  makes  large  donations  to 
the  Anti-Saloon  League.  He  deprives  the  little 
ones  of  their  Sunday. 

We  in  America  are  Supermen  in  our  glorious 


78      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

disregard  of  others,  but  without  the  excuse  of 
the  Superman.  We  are  like  children  badly 
brought  up.  Our  lack  of  sensitiveness  is  amaz 
ingly  revealed  in  the  comic  supplement  of  our 
newspapers,  the  weekly  glorification  of  horse-play. 
The  comic  press  is  an  unfailing  determinant  of  a 
country's  morals.  I  am  prepared  to  admit  that 
the  coarse  reflection  of  the  life  erotic  in  French 
and  German  comic  journals  points  to  a  similar 
lack  of  sensitiveness  on  the  Continent  in  matters 
relating  to  sex. 

We  are  perhaps  most  barbarous,  most  uneth 
ical,  in  our  attitude  toward  age.  We  lack  that 
tact  of  the  heart  for  which  white  hair  in  itself  is 
an  object  of  veneration.  The  wonder  is  that  we 
don't  eat  up  our  parents  when  their  physical  pow 
ers  decline.  I  am  sure  that  certain  exponents  of 
strenuousness  would  have  something  to  say  in  de 
fense  of  this  practice.  We  would  have  heard 
such  a  measure  urged  from  the  White  House  if 
our  chief  executives  were  not  themselves  already 
beyond  the  Oslerian  age-limit. 

The  fathers  of  the  Republic  have,  indeed, 
shown  their  wisdom  when  they  placed  the  highest 
gift  beyond  the  grasp  of  a  boy.  The  cult  of  Os- 
lerism  could  flourish  only  in  the  youngest  land  of 
the  world.  We  value  youth  above  brains.  I  may 
state  so  frankly,  having  both.  We  yield  our  seats 
in  a  street  railway- gladly  to  young  girlhood;  with 
reluctance  to  an  elderly  woman;  never  would  we 


THE  MORALS  OF  EUROPE         79 

dream  of  sacrificing  our  convenience  to  an  elderly 
man.  In  Europe  I  have  seen  young  ladies  charm 
ingly  offer  their  seats  to  their  elders  of  either  sex. 

Recently  Mr.  Roosevelt,  before  his  departure 
for  Africa — (How  quaint  this  sentence  will  ring 
in  a  hundred  years  when  we  have  all  passed  into 
history!) — desperately  clung  to  a  strap  in  a 
Broadway  car.  Perhaps,  if  he  had  still  brandished 
the  Big  Stick  we  would  have  shown  some  courtesy 
to  the  man.  But  we  have  no  reverence  for  past 
attainment.  We  have  no  use  for  the  "  has-been." 
No  title  softens  the  pillow  of  an  "  ex-."  Abroad, 
a  distinguished  man  is  honored  not  only  for  what 
he  is,  but  for  what  he  has  been  in  the  past. 
Our  regard  is  confined  to  the  man  in  office; 
for  the  retired  fighter  we  have  merely  a  mild 
contempt. 

We  forgive  the  man  of  action  every  sin  except 
the  one  forgivable  sin.  We  countenance  a  Sen 
ator's  political  corruption,  but  rise  in  anger  over 
his  indiscreet  note  to  some  questionable  female. 
We  boil  over  with  indignation,  where  Paris  or 
Berlin  would  shrug  their  shoulders  and  smile. 
Uncharitable,  I  say,  and  un-Christian.  Christ 
drove  the  money-changers  from  the  temple,  but  he 
forgave  the  Magdalen. 

We  are  rather  proud  at  heart  of  our  financial 
robber  barons.  We  expect  art  to  be  moral.  We 
never  question  the  morals  of  Wall  street.  We  ap 
ply  the  penal  code  to  the  artist,  but  we  have  only 


8o      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

regard  for  the  virtuoso  in  manipulating  the  ticker. 
We  set  up  monuments  to  grafters.  Personally,  I 
have  no  objection  to  graft.  On  the  contrary.  But 
I  am  afraid  that  it  is  a  vice  typically  American. 
There  are  grafters  abroad,  naturally.  But  one 
does  not  speak  of  them  with  sneaking  admiration. 
They  aren't  "  the  thing,"  socially.  They  are  not 
regarded  as  models  for  the  young.  In  Europe  the 
day  of  the  robber  baron  is  over;  in  America  it  has 
only  begun. 

We  do  not  interfere  with  the  big  thieves,  ex 
cept  by  calling  them  names.  But  we  interfere 
actively  with  the  personal  freedom  of  our  humbler 
citizens.  We  forbid  them  to  play  or  to  drink  beer 
on  Sunday.  I  never  play  athletic  games,  and  I 
hardly  ever  drink  beer.  But  I  sometimes  burn 
with  desire  to  soak  myself  with  rum  as  a  protest 
against  the  fanatics.  I  believe,  to  paraphrase 
Wilde,  that  it  is  not  immoral  for  a  prickly  thistle 
to  be  a  prickly  thistle,  but  that  it  would  be  fright 
fully  selfish  if  she  wanted  all  the  flowers  of  the 
field  to  be  both  prickly  and  thistles.  I  have  noth 
ing  to  say  against  the  teetotaler.  I  respect  his 
individuality.  But  let  him  respect  mine.  We 
continually  sin  against  individuality.  Ours  is 
a  country  of  ready-made  morals  and  ready- 
made  clothes.  Abroad  no  one  meddles  with 
personal  liberty,  and  nobody  wears  ready-made 
clothes. 

Conformity  is  our    catchword.     We    suppress 


THE  MORALS  OF  EUROPE         81 

subjective  forces  in  politics  and  in  art.  We  elim 
inate  the  personal  note  in  the  press.  The  day  of 
the  Greeleys  was  brief.  Journalists  abroad  have 
certain  convictions  which  they  are  not  prepared  to 
sacrifice  at  any  price.  We  have  no  such  convic 
tions.  One  evening  I  had  dinner  in  Berlin  with 
a  celebrated  professor  of  political  history.  His 
name  is  on  everybody's  tongue.  He  is  a  man  who 
hobnobs  with  Emperors,  and  his  weekly  reviews 
of  the  political  situation  are  regarded  as  final. 
All  the  newspapers  of  the  world  come  to  his 
library,  and  he  reads  them  all  in  the  original  lan 
guages. 

The  conversation  naturally  drifted  to  journal 
ism,  and  I  interpreted  for  him  the  status  of  the 
American  editor.  The  policy  of  the  paper,  I  ex 
plained,  is  prescribed  by  the  proprietor  and  re 
versed  at  his  pleasure;  the  editor's  personal  opin 
ion  is  of  no  consequence,  even  if  his  salary  may  be 
that  of  a  king.  He  is  a  living  automaton,  paid  for 
his  dexterity,  not  his  views.  He  might  write 
Democratic  editorials  in  the  morning,  and  Repub 
lican  editorials  at  night.  In  private  life  he  might 
be  a  Socialist  or  a  Mugwump.  Yet  no  one  would 
think  the  less  of  him,  or  brand  him  as  an  unprin 
cipled  rogue.  I  did  not  pretend  to  be  better  than 
others.  I  even  admitted  that  to  be  such  an  in 
tellectual  Jekyll  and  Hyde  might  be  a  delightful 
sensation.  As  long  as  my  articles  were  unsigned, 
I  would  not  regard  myself  as  responsible  for  their 


82      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

tenor.  I  should  look  upon  my  job  as  an  exercise 
in  political  dialectics. 

The  professor  was  very  much  shocked  by  this 
lack  of  principle.  His  wife,  a  delightful  woman, 
looked  upon  me  as  one  looks  upon  a  leper.  A 
German  journalist  of  standing  would  refuse  to 
write  a  line,  signed  or  unsigned,  of  which  he  dis 
approved  in  his  heart.  Those  who  sacrifice  their 
convictions  are  regarded  as  pariahs  by  the  profes 
sion  at  large.  Journalists  abroad  take  themselves 
more  seriously  than  we.  They  have  finer  ethical 
standards.  The  professor,  being  not  only  a 
learned,  but  also  a  wise  man,  realized  that  the 
views  I  expounded  were  the  logical  growth  of  our 
peculiar  culture — or  the  lack  thereof;  but  I  am 
afraid  he  looks  upon  them  as  cancerous.  Which, 
perhaps,  they  are. 

We  play  the  game  to  win.  We  have  little  of  the 
sportsman's  joy  in  the  game  as  such.  Not  for  us 
the  subtler  victory  of  courageous  defeat.  As 
money  is  the  stake,  we  despise  the  poor — not  be 
cause  they  are  poor,  but  because  they  have  not 
"  made  good."  We  make  compromises,  permissible 
in  journalism,  but  fatal  in  art.  Literary  geniuses 
of  the  old  world  are  prepared,  for  the  sake  of 
their  vision,  to  live  on  a  crust.  Schiller  was  a  man 
of  small  means.  Indeed,  I  probably  got  more  for 
my  English  version  of  his  Maid  of  Orleans  from 
Maude  Adams  than  he  ever  did  for  the  original. 
Chatterton  "  perished  in  his  pride."  I,  Le  Galli- 


THE  MORALS  OF  EUROPE         83 

enne  says,  perish  in  my  conceit.  Honorable  pov 
erty  had  no  terror  for  the  great  English  poets. 
We  barter  dreamland  kingdoms  for  real  estate. 

Our  greatest  living  author  is  actually  a  corpora 
tion.  We  may  speak  of  "  The  Mark  Twain  "  as 
we  speak  of  "  The  Standard  Oil."  That  opens 
amusing  vistas  of  "  The  John  Milton,  Limtd.," 
and  "  The  William  Shakespeare,  Inc."  For  all 
we  know,  this  may  be  the  solution  of  the  Shake 
speare  problem.  William  Shakespeare  may  have 
been  merely  the  trade-mark  for  a  stock  company, 
of  which  Francis  Bacon  was  the  chief  stockholder, 
and  the  gentleman  usually  referred  to  as  the  au 
thor  of  the  plays  merely  a  dummy  director!  If 
John  Keats  had  been  an  American  he  might  have 
been  incorporated  under  the  laws  of  New  Jersey. 
His  name,  instead  of  being  "  writ  in  water," 
would  be  writ  on  watered  stock!  The  genius  of 
Poe,  alas,  was  antipodal  to  the  American  spirit. 
If  he  had  capitalized  his  brains  at  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  he  would  surely  be  in  the  Hall 
of  Fame.  Let  me  state  right  here  that  I  refuse 
ever  to  have  my  name  there  engraven.  I  prefer 
to  roam  through  the  spirit  world  unindorsed  by 
smug  nobodies,  a  vagabond  ghost  with  Whitman 
and  Poe. 

I  turn  an  honest  penny  wherever  I  can.  While 
my  attitude  toward  the  Golden  Calf  is  not  one  of 
worship,  I  approach  it  with  considerable  respect. 
Every  dollar  is  so  much  potential  energy  impris- 


84     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

oned.  But  I  refuse  to  water  my  literary  stock  for 
any  amount  of  money.  That  is  the  only  way  an 
artist  can  be  immoral.  We  have  yet  to  learn  the 
raptures  of  the  scholar  whose  eyes  grow  dim  with 
tears  when,  after  digging  in  dusty  tomes  for  five- 
and-twenty  years,  he  discovers  the  root  of  some 
irregular  verb.  Not  ours  the  thrill  of  the  poet 
who,  after  sleepless  nights,  dances  with  glee  be 
cause  he  has  at  last  wrested  from  his  brain  the  ulti 
mate  expression  for  some  sensuous  and  elusive 
emotion.  We  rank  the  man  who  gets  away  with 
another  man's  invention  above  the  author  himself. 
Logically,  we  should  worship  the  devil  because  he 
gets  away  with  such  a  large  part  of  God's  creation. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ADAM  AND  EVE 

WE  exaggerate  racial  distinctions.  Save  for 
skin  and  clothes  we  are  not,  any  of  us,  far  removed 
from  the  ape.  Primal  instincts  in  men  and  women 
are  the  same  throughout  the  world,  and  the  lure 
of  the  flesh  is  the  same.  The  American  college 
boy  and  the  young  Eskimo  in  his  sealskin  are 
stirred  by  the  same  primitive  impulse.  The  fun 
damental  facts  of  sex  are  identical  in  Kalamazoo 
and  in  Pekin.  But  our  attitudes  toward  sex  un 
dergo  various  transformations,  with  changes  of 
climate.  We  all  have  the  same  appetites,  but  our 
modes  of  gratification  vary  with  our  refinement. 
The  table  manners  at  Sherry's  are  not  those  of 
Childs'.  The  desire  of  Lucullus  for  whipped 
oysters,  and  the  ravin  of  the  Parisians,  who  stood 
in  line  for  bread  during  the  great  revolution,  were 
fundamentally  one  and  the  same  hunger;  but  the 
mastication  of  the  Roman  was  art,  while  the 
French  mob  chewed,  munched  and  bolted  hide 
ously.  Similarly,  it  may  be  safely  affirmed,  that 
the  ways  of  the  love-famished  lad  are  not  those  of 
the  gourmet. 

85 


86     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Europeans  are  gourmets  in  love.  They  relish 
it  as  they  relish  their  oysters.  We  are  a  trifle 
ashamed  of  it.  But,  being  human,  we  cannot 
starve  ourselves.  We  steal  to  love's  banquet 
stealthily,  with  an  uncomfortable  feeling  of  doing 
wrong.  We  sin,  but  we  sin  against  our  principles. 
The  continental  youth  sins  on  principle.  We  make 
the  flesh  indecent,  a  thing  we  despise,  but  from 
which,  being  human,  we  cannot  divorce  ourselves. 
The  refined  European  spiritualizes  the  flesh;  he 
makes  it  beautiful;  he  turns  its  frailty  into 
strength.  Consequently,  his  love-life  is  healthier 
than  our  own.  Even  when  hectic  desire  entices 
him  into  devious  gardens  of  passion,  vulgarity  will 
not  bespatter  his  roses.  We  cannot  be  wicked 
without  being  coarse.  The  consciousness  of  sin 
dwells  in  our  hearts  like  a  worm.  Spiritually  there 
is  nothing  of  the  Greek  in  us. 

We  may,  however,  speak  of  a  renascence  of  the 
Greek  spirit  abroad.  Euphorion  has  not  yet 
sprung  into  life.  He  is  about  to  be  born.  Ger 
many  is  in  travail.  She  is  laboring,  painfully, 
slowly.  Her,  at  times,  morbid  caprices  in  the  im 
mediate  past  were  those  of  a  woman  enceinte.  The 
trip  of  the  Greek  dance  is  heard  again  in  Berlin. 
The  subtleties  of  Greek  sophists  are  echoed  in  Ger 
man  letters.  Poets  hark  back  to  the  Hellenic 
themes — Hofmannsthal's  CEdipus  confronts  the 
Sphinx.  Electra  wails  in  the  music  of  Strauss. 
Nudity,  the  weapon  of  Phryne,  is  raised  to  an  art 


ADAM  AND  EVE  87 

by  Olga  Desmond.  The  voice  of  Dionysos  is  heard 
in  Nietzsche.  Germany's  joy  in  the  body  is  not  yet 
purely  Hellenic.  Poisonous  vapors  cloud  the  sun. 
But  sunrise  is  nigh.  Already  we  hear  the  little 
laugh  of  Aspasia.  Germany  has  beheld  the  glori 
fied  het<era  re-encased  in  the  flesh.  Beautiful  and 
cerebral,  and  free,  she  is  the  inspiration  of  sages 
and  poets.  Not  hers  the  penalty  of  mortality.  She 
is  the  mother  of  spirit-children;  and  Charmides  is 
her  kinsman.  He  is  more  purely  spiritual.  Docile 
and  enthusiastic,  pupil  and  friend,  his  lovely  pres 
ence  comforts  and  stays  in  those  high  altitudes  of 
the  mind  where  the  garlands  of  passion  shrivel  to 
dust. 

We  are  not  yet  prepared  for  Hellenic  ideals. 
Charmides  amongst  us  would  be  a  dandified 
"  high-brow,"  and  Aspasia,  "  off-color."  We 
would  mar  and  crush  and  pervert  her.  And  we 
would  certainly  "  cut "  her.  We  understand 
physiological  passion,  and  we  understand  spiritual 
passion,  but  we  are  intensely  suspicious  where  one 
partakes  of  the  elements  of  the  other.  It  is  curi 
ous  that  the  greatest  singer  of  spiritualized  pas 
sion  should  have  been  an  American.  Leaves  of 
Grass,  not  Mademoiselle  de  Mattpin,  is  "  the  Gol 
den  Book  of  Spirit  and  Sense."  Perhaps  Whit 
man  was  given  to  us  because  we  most  needed  him. 

We  need  him  more  than  ever  for  the  emancipa 
tion  of  man  and  the  emancipation  of  passion. 
Every  country,  they  say,  has  the  government  it 


88      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

deserves.  We  are  governed  by  Woman.  We 
cringe  before  her  as  slaves  before  the  master. 
And,  like  slaves,  we  talk  evil  of  her  behind  her 
back.  And  we  adore  her  in  false  and  hysterical 
fashion.  The  reason  usually  ascribed  by  foreign 
ers  for  the  truly  anomalous  position  of  woman  in 
the  United  States  is  the  scarcity  of  females  among 
our  early  settlers.  They  haven't  been  scarce,  how 
ever,  for  a  good  many  years.  There  have  been 
plenty  of  them  as  long  as  /  can  remember.  I  would 
blame  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  The  essential  in 
decency  of  the  Puritan  mind  is  clearly  exposed  in 
the  attitude  of  the  American  Adam  toward  the 
American  Eve. 

We  deify  woman  because  we  bestialize  passion. 
We  place  her  on  a  pedestal,  we  forget  she  has  a 
body,  so  as  not  to  despise  her.  We  worship  her 
as  a  goddess,  because  we  fear  to  degrade  her  as  a 
mate.  We  protect  her  by  preposterous  laws,  be 
cause  we  distrust  ourselves  and  her.  We  have  not 
yet  learned  to  love  the  body  purely.  We  fail  to 
discriminate  between  passion  and  vice.  So  dis 
torted  is  our  vision,  that  sex  in  itself  seems  debas 
ing.  But  the  instinct  of  sex  is  ineradicable.  The 
goddess  topples  from  the  altar,  if  she  does  not 
descend  voluntarily. 

Man  is  divine  because  he  is  human.  We  are 
ashamed  of  that  divinity.  Out  of  that  shame  is 
born  the  sham  of  our  Puritan  morals  and  a  mor 
bidity  of  which  we  are  hardly  aware.  We  yield 


ADAM  AND  EVE  89 

to  temptation  surreptitiously,  like  bad  monks.  We 
dare  not  make  sin  beautiful.  We  make  it  ugly 
and  coarse.  And  every  time  we  react  against  our 
own  vulgar  trespasses,  we  prostrate  ourselves  be 
fore  the  Good  Woman  who  doesn't  exist,  and 
doesn't  want  to  exist.  We  glory  in  groveling  in 
the  dust  at  her  feet.  We  give  expression  to  the 
unhealthy  sentiment  that  no  man  is  good  enough 
for  a  woman.  When  a  prostitute  slays  one 
of  her  lovers,  she  is  beatified  in  the  press.  We 
refuse  to  admit  that  a  woman  can  be  really 
bad. 

I  always  thought  it  ungallant,  if  truthful,  of 
Adam,  to  blame  it  all  on  the  woman.  But  why 
go  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  blame  everything 
on  the  male?  There  is  a  strongly  masochistic  ele 
ment  in  the  American  attitude  toward  woman. 
The  man  who  wheels  a  baby  carriage  for  his  sick 
wife  deserves  laudation — he  is  a  hero;  but  the 
man  who  assumes  the  domestic  functions  of  the 
female  unnecessarily  is  a  specimen  from  Krafft- 
Ebing. 

Elinor  Glyn  says  that  American  men  are  like 
brothers  or  elderly  aunts.  Elinor  has  her  flashes. 
The  maleness  of  the  average  American  is  certainly 
not  so  insistently  felt  as  that  of  his  cousin  abroad. 
Externally,  at  least,  there  is  frequently  a  certain 
feminine  strain  in  the  American  man.  He  is 
handsomer,  more  graceful,  less  strongly  sexed. 
Abroad,  where  men  dictate  theatrical  fashion,  the 


9o     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Chorus  Girl  monopolizes  the  musical  comedy 
stage.  In  an  Amazon  kingdom  there  would  be 
only  Chorus  Boys.  We  have  not  reached  that 
phase  as  yet,  but  undoubtedly  the  Chorus  Boy  is 
already  in  the  ascendant. 

Our  women  are  more  self-possessed,  more  ath 
letic,  and,  if  it  must  be  said,  more  mannish  than 
the  Laura  of  Petrarch  and  the  Gretchen  of  Faust. 
Such  modifications  must  already  affect  in  some 
subtle  manner  the  relations  between  the  sexes. 
They  give  rise  to  cycles  of  problems  novel  in  the 
present  stage  of  civilization.  Perhaps  the  balance 
of  power  is  shifting.  We  have  placed  woman  in 
the  saddle:  beware  lest  she  take  the  reins!  Some 
day  we  may  be  officially  what  we  are  already  in 
essence,  a  matriarchy,  swayed  by  the  "  mother 
right "  of  primitive  races.  Unless  a  radical  re 
adjustment  takes  place,  the  world  may  see  the 
spectacle  of  an  American  Amazon  Queen  ruling  a 
henpecked  nation. 

One  hope,  however,  remains  to  the  Mere  Male : 
the  Eternal  Woman.  Yes,  woman  herself.  For 
we  are  mistaken  if  we  imagine  that  she  looks  up  to 
the  man  who  humiliates  himself  before  her.  She 
is  much  too  near  the  earth,  too  human,  to  find 
pleasure  in  the  exalted  position  we  force  upon  her. 
Nietzsche  put  the  case  rather  strongly;  too 
strongly,  I  think.  It  is  not  the  whip  she  craves, 
but  the  master.  When  an  American  woman  has 
the  opportunity  of  meeting  a  foreigner,  she 


ADAM  AND  EVE  91 

usually  marries  him.  His  masterful  masculinity, 
not  his  title,  compels  her  attention.  International 
marriages  are  often  unfortunate,  because  the 
American  woman,  nursed  in  selfishness,  lacks  the 
worldly  wisdom  and  graceful  resignation  of  her 
less  imperious  sister.  Nevertheless  she  is  glad  to 
slip  from  her  pedestal  unnoticed,  when  she  travels 
abroad.  Accustomed  to  epicene  adoration,  she  not 
infrequently  falls  an  easy  victim  to  aggressive 
maleness  abroad. 

The  American  Girl  in  Europe  reminds  one  of  a 
young  queen  traveling  incognito.  But  that  is 
perilous,  little  girl,  if  you  don't  know  the  rules  of 
the  game!  The  young  German  girl  is  wiser  than 
you  in  some  things.  She  is  less  self-possessed,  but 
more  self-reliant.  She  doesn't  expect  a  man  to 
carry  all  her  bundles.  And  she  is  not  afraid  to  go 
home  unaccompanied,  if  need  be.  And  when  she 
goes  out  with  a  man,  she  will  not  permit  him  to 
pay  for  her  as  a  rule.  It  isn't  reasonable  that 
the  male  should  support  the  female  before  they 
are  married.  The  young  American  is  expected  to 
pay  for  the  mere  privilege  of  dining  with  a  wo 
man.  Dear  ladies,  who  read  this,  do  not  think 
that  I  would  not  gladly  invite  you  to  dinner.  I 
object  to  the  principle,  not  to  the  custom.  The 
young  German  woman  generally  accepts  no  such 
favors  as  a  matter  of  course.  She  knows  that 
"  give  and  take  "  is  the  basis  of  every  bargain. 
An  unfair  bargain  demoralizes  the  gainer.  She 


92      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

also  knows  that  the  law  of  the  man  is  not  the  law 
of  the  maid.  What's  sauce  for  the  gander  isn't 
always  sauce  for  the  goose. 

Eve  abroad  knows  that  Adam  is  polygamistic ; 
and  that,  if  we  wish  to  preserve  the  institution  of 
matrimony  we  must  provide  safety  valves  for  the 
man.  One  half  of  the  world,  we  know,  believes 
in  polygamy.  The  other  half  practises  it.  The 
Koran  sanctions,  economy  vetoes,  a  plurality  of 
wives.  Occidental  nations  are  monogamic  in 
theory,  not  in  fact. 

The  continental  woman,  as  a  rule,  overlooks  the 
extra-marital  exploits  of  the  husband.  The  neces 
sity  for  this  precaution  is  recognized  officially  only 
in  the  Code  Napoleon.  But  if  you  talk  to  the 
wives  confidentially,  they  will  make  startling  ad 
missions.  I  know  a  charming  couple,  somewhat 
advanced  in  years,  whose  married  life  is  an  idyl. 
With  tender  solicitude  they  read  each  other's 
wishes  from  their  eyes.  I  was  astonished,  because 
I  had  been  told  that  for  many  years  the  husband 
had  spent  half  his  income  on  a  mistress.  And  the 
wife  knew  it,  always.  We  had  a  heart-to-heart 
talk. 

"  Where  is  she  now?  "  I  inquired. 

"  She  is  dead,"  the  old  lady  answered.  There 
was  a  trace  of  relief  in  her  voice. 

"And  she  has  had  no  successor?" 

"  None.  You  see,  he  is  getting  older,  and  even 
before  her  death  he  had  come  back  to  me.  He 


ADAM  AND  EVE  93 

loved  me  all  the  time;  the  other  woman  merely 
appealed  to  his  senses.  I  am  very  happy  now.  I 
only  regret  the  money  he  squandered  on  that — 
that  woman." 

"  Hush,"  I  said,  "  she  is  dead.  It  is  only  just 
that  men  should  be  more  lavish  with  their  mis 
tresses  than  with  their  wives.  The  Scarlet  Woman 
is  disinherited.  Legally,  socially,  she  is  defense 
less.  The  wife  is  privileged,  fortified  by  the  world. 
Surely  the  guerdon  of  sin  is  scant  in  comparison." 

"  Probably  you  are  right,"  she  replied.  "  I  be 
gin  to  see  life  more  steadily  every  year.  We  never 
speak  of  her,  save  as  one  speaks  of  a  friend.  He 
tries  hard  to  make  me  forget,  as  well  as  forgive. 
I  let  him  exert  himself.  I  accept  his  little  favors," 
she  added,  wistfully.  "  I  tried  hard  enough  to 
make  him  forget  in  the  past,  and — failed.  I  did 
not  let  him  kiss  me  for  many  years." 

"And  now?" 

At  this  moment  the  husband  came  home  from  a 
late  constitutional,  bringing  her  flowers  like  some 
ancient  Philemon  to  his  Baucis,  and  tenderly 
kissed  her  behind  the  ear.  If  she  had  been  an 
American  woman,  she  would  have  dragged  him  to 
the  divorce  court  years  and  years  ago.  And  the 
late  afternoon  of  their  lives  would  have  been  sun 
less  and  loveless. 

We  often  make  a  mess  of  marriage  because  we 
marry  too  young.  We  are  in  indecorous  haste  to 
perpetuate  the  species.  Marriage  invariably  rubs 


94     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

the  first  bloom  from  the  rose  of  romance.  But 
sometimes,  between  sincere  men  and  women,  the 
flower  of  perfect  understanding  blooms  more 
lovely  in  the  place  of  the  first  impetuous  passion. 
But  the  soil  must  be  prepared  for  its  growth.  The 
inexperienced  boy-husband  and  his  girl-wife  are 
too  impatient.  They  will  not  wait  for  the  soft 
tendrils  to  sprout.  Leaf  by  leaf  they  pick  the  rose 
to  pieces,  and  then,  in  petulant  anger,  desert  the 
garden. 

Europe  provides,  for  the  husband,  at  least,  an 
amorous  education  antedating  his  marriage.  He 
needs  lessons  in  sentiment,  not  in  sensation. 
Kisses,  bought  and  loveless,  are  insufficient.  The 
young  German  generally  has  what  is  called  "  a 
minor  affair,"  Ein  kleines  Ferhdltniss.  One  might 
call  it  a  miniature  marriage.  The  girl,  usually 
some  shopgirl,  sincerely  loves  him.  She  does  not 
expect  him  to  marry  her.  And  some  day,  she 
knows,  she  will  lose  him.  He  brings  culture  be 
yond  her  station  into  her  life.  She  teaches  him 
the  lesson  of  loving  kindness.  But  for  her,  he 
would  learn  from  the  gutter  the  lesson  of  vice. 
She  is  the  steward  of  his  affection.  She  keeps  it 
pure  for  the  woman  who  will  take  her  place. 
When  he  marries  there  will  be  tears,  and  not  a 
little  heartache.  And  then  she,  too,  will  marry, 
and  will  bring  a  trace  of  the  refinement  of  her 
lover  into  the  humbler  home  of  the  husband. 
The  miniature  marriage  is  at  an  end.  None  the 


ADAM  AND  EVE  95 

worse  for  their  experience,  the  youth  and  his  ina 
morata  will  each  enter  the  major  life. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  The  standard  of 
bourgeois  morality  is  the  same  the  world  over. 
But  we  are  all  of  us  sinners.  Only  abroad,  men 
trespass  artistically.  We  are  bunglers  in  sin.  In 
Europe,  however,  the  moral  code  is  not  indis 
criminately  applied.  Genius  is  not  compelled  to 
wear  the  cloak  of  ready-made  morals.  There  is 
a  certain  poet  abroad;  he  is  very  famous.  I  will 
not  mention  his  name.  Everybody  knew  that  he 
was  equally  in  love  with  his  wife  and  with  an 
actress  of  great  reputation.  Society  respected  his 
peculiar  temperament,  and  invariably  asked  either 
the  wife  or  the  mistress  when  he  was  invited.  The 
mistress  lived  with  him  in  town;  the  wife  shared 
his  country  seat.  It  happened  some  years  ago 
that  both  women  about  the  same  time  whispered 
the  tenderest  secret  into  his  ear.  That,  I  believe, 
is  the  way  they  put  it  in  novels.  When  at  last  the 
fatal  day  had  dawned,  the  poet  is  said  to  have 
traveled  hither  and  thither  between  his  two  abodes, 
to  comfort  both  women  in  their  hour  of  need. 
Berlin  laughed,  and  forgave. 

Margarete  Beutler,  a  woman  of  distinguished 
poetical  gifts,  frankly  announced  in  an  autobi 
ographical  sketch  that  she  was  temperamentally 
unfitted  for  permanent  wedlock;  and  Gabriele 
Reuter,  a  Hypatia  of  letters,  boldly  advertised  the 
birth  of  her  extra-marital  child.  Both  women 


96      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

command  the  respect  of  even  respectability  abroad. 
Europe  has  accepted  still  stranger  erotic  vagaries 
from  genius.  Not  because  she  approves  of  sexual 
irregularity,  but  because  she  attaches  no  exagger 
ated  importance  to  purely  personal  physiological 
functions.  Brain  counts  for  more  than  conven 
tional  morals.  Aphrodite's  reputation  in  Greece 
was  deplorable,  but  she  nevertheless  remained  a 
goddess.  Mercury  was  a  thief,  but  divine  honors 
were  not  therefore  withheld.  Those  in  whom  the 
divine  spark  glows  and  burns,  must  be  forgiven 
many  frailties  that  would  be  unpardonable  in  mor 
tals  not  so  inspired.  Their  genius,  in  turn,  casts 
the  glamor  of  romance  over  the  squalid  facts  of 
existence. 


CHAPTER  •  IX 

SOME  WOMEN 

I  HAVE  never  loitered  with  prurient  interest  in 
the  love-marts  of  the  world.  I  have  been  intoxi 
cated  with  the  glitter  an-d  glare  of  Broadway,  but 
even  as  a  boy  I  never  glanced  twice,  except  in  pity, 
at  the  venders  of  passion.  Therefore  have  I  little 
to  tell  of  the  Friedrichstrasse  at  night.  I  distin 
guish,  of  course,  between  the  demi-mondaine  and 
the  scarlet-robed  daughter  of  Lilith  who  has  come 
to  us  through  the  ages.  The  wisdom  of  the  cen 
turies,  ironic,  yet  wistful,  distorts  the  curve  of  her 
smile.  Her  eyebrows  quiver  like  serpents.  Her 
tunic  is  more  precious  than  purple,  for  it  is  dyed 
with  the  heart-blood  of  emperors;  and  her  tiara  is 
jeweled  with  the  songs  of  the  world.  Semiramis, 
Sappho  and  Catherine  the  Great,  her  lurid  incarna 
tions,  flame  up  against  the  horizon.  Scarlet  and 
splendid,  she  holds  in  her  hand  the  jewel  of  death 
less  yearning.  She  is  begotten  of  Heaven  and 
Hell. 

There  are  born  three  types  of  the  female — the 
Eternal  Harlot,  the  Eternal  Woman,  and  the  Wo 
man  in  Scarlet. 

97 


98      CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

The  Eternal  Harlot  bears  the  fragile  vial  of 
transitory  delight.  She  is  all  of  the  earth,  earthy. 

Less  robust,  still  of  the  earth,  but  spiritualized 
and  transfigured,  mistress  and  mother,  the  Eternal 
Woman  brings  loving  kindness  and  peace  into  the 
world.  Unlike  the  Woman  in  Scarlet,  she  has  no 
aspirations  beyond  the  Race.  Unlike  the  demi- 
mondaine's,  her  eyes  are  set  toward  the  future. 
Through  her,  evolution  works  its  indomitable 
will. 

The  harlot  is  woman  debased;  she  is  woman 
without  cosmic  purpose.  The  Woman  in  Scarlet 
is  woman  endowed  with  an  alien  purpose,  striving 
to  transcend  the  limits  of  sex.  But  sin  and  song 
and  dominion  cannot  appease  in  her  heart  the  cry 
for  the  child  and  the  legitimate  functions  of  wife- 
hood;  barren  and  sad  and  dissatisfied,  she  passes 
into  the  night. 

I  have  always  viewed  Venus  peripatetica  with 
compassion  and  horror.  And  yet,  are  not  we  who 
sell  our  souls  more  despicable  than  those  who  sell 
only  their  bodies?  The  woman  of  the  street  pre 
serves  her  authentic  emotions  for  her  lover.  She 
keeps  her  heart  unscathed  of  the  amorous  traffic. 
The  writer,  however,  cannot  give  less  than  his 
soul.  He  transmits  something  of  his  real  self  in 
variably  into  his  work,  even  if  lovelessly  under 
taken.  Try  as  you  may,  you  can't  help  being  sin 
cere,  sometimes. 

The  ^Esthetic  School,  conscious  of  the  infamy 


SOME  WOMEN  99 

of  this  indecent  exposure,  diadems  Pose  with  the 
Castilian  wreath.  But  that  is,  in  itself,  a  pose. 
We  can,  after  all,  draw  only  upon  the  resources 
within  us;  and  for  literary  purposes  there  is  no  ink 
like  heart  blood.  Le  style  c'est  I'homme;  and  all 
books  are  confessions. 

But  that  is  why  the  Friedrichstrasse  at  night 
sickens  my  heart.  In  the  daytime  the  Friedrich 
strasse  is  a  highway  of  commerce.  When  night 
draws  down  her  curtains  spangled  with  constella 
tions,  the  face  of  the  street  changes  swiftly  as  by 
the  stroke  of  Merlin's  magic  wand.  The  mask 
of  humanity  falls;  the  werewolf  appears,  savage 
and  growling.  We  are  borne  along  the  walking 
love-mart  of  Berlin. 

I  could  tell  strange  things  of  the  Friedrich- 
strasse,  of  uncouth  passions  and  fantastic  desires. 
This  is  indeed  a  carnival  of  vice.  Here  unclean 
phantoms  keep  their  tryst.  Curious  caprices;  un 
canny  suggestions;  leprous  faces  and  leering  lips. 
Sin  in  strange  mummery  grins  at  us.  Lechery  in 
divers  shapes  makes  indecent  grimaces.  Every 
where  the  phosphorescent  glow  of  an  ancient  civ 
ilization.  On  Broadway  I  have  seen  only  its  pal 
lid  reflection. 

If  you  carelessly  glanced  at  this  girl  you  would 
not  imagine  that  she  is  really  Salmacis  mincing  his 
steps  as  of  old.  Gray,  pale  wraiths  of  Greek 
things  walk  in  the  shadow  of  Berlin. 

Hush!     I  will  be  silent,  and  chain  those  dis- 


ioo     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

quieting  visions  in  the  remotest  cerebral  cavern. 
I  shall  shut  my  eyes  to  that  unholy  procession,  sus 
taining  the  torch  of  unchastity  and  lighting  the 
temples  of  lust. 

In  the  Moulin  Rouge  and  in  Arcadia,  both  not 
far  from  the  Friedrichstrasse,  vice  stalks  in  a 
dress  suit.  There  are  cafes  in  the  Friedrich 
strasse  where  its  companion  is  murder.  Where 
lust  is  king,  aristocracy  joins  hands  with  the  slums. 
But  my  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world.  Love  and 
the  women  I  sing  dwell  in  another  region. 

Ermengarde,  for  instance,  lived  in  Charlotten- 
burg.  Charlottenburg  is  to  Berlin  what  Harlem  is 
to  New  York.  Ermengarde  is  to  me  what  Frau 
von  Stein  was  to  Goethe.  We  have  no  such  figures 
as  Frau  von  Stein  in  America.  No  text-book  tells 
of  Longfellow's  and  Whittier's  extra-marital 
loves.  Poe's  love  affairs  were  hopelessly  Platonic, 
and  Whitman's  children  a  bluff!  We  shall  never 
have  a  full-blooded  art  until  we  develop  the 
liaison. 

As  sounds  from  a  music-box,  women's  faces 
float  in  swift  succession  from  the  secret  chambers 
of  my  brain.  I  beg  your  pardon  if  I  have  falsi 
fied  literary  history  to  round  out  a  figure  of  speech. 
My  relations  with  Ermengarde  were  far  more  in 
nocuous  than  Goethe's  with  Frau  von  Stein.  We 
never  were  sweethearts ;  but  love,  like  a  spark,  was 
always  ready  to  leap  into  flame.  Those  were  de 
lightful  days,  and  delicious — afternoon  teas ! 


SOME  WOMEN  101 

Dear  Ermengarde,  you  were  terribly  knowing. 
One  could  talk  to  you  of  all  things.  You  knew 
everybody;  you  had  a  man's  understanding.  Yet, 
how  womanly  you  were !  You  were  fond  of  me, 
more  than  you  dared  confess  even  to  yourself.  But 
you  didn't  take  me  quite  seriously,  and  you  knew 
I  was  fickle.  When  we  went  to  the  theater  to 
gether,  and  you  were  gowned  in  your  most  splen 
did  attire — I  remember  that  dress  overlaid  with 
silver ! — I  seemed  to  myself  like  a  page  of  mediae 
val  days  watching  a  band  of  players  at  the  side  of 
his  queen.  And  sometimes  when  her  interest  in 
the  play  flagged,  she  softly  squeezed  his  hand. 
But  the  heart  of  the  little  page  fluttered  always,  so 
that  he  heard  no  word  of  what  was  said  on  the 
stage. 

And  there  was  Madeleine,  supple,  strong  and 
superb.  I  think,  Ermengarde,  you  were  a  little 
jealous  of  her.  I  loved  to  sit  with  Madeleine  and 
her  husband.  We  had  our  coffee  in  the  garden 
room,  the  three  of  us.  We  discussed  art,  and  love, 
and  her  prospective  admirers.  Madeleine  was  at 
heart  a  Madonna — a  Madonna  wedded  to  Don 
Juan.  A  Madonna,  moreover,  who  had  absorbed, 
intellectually,  the  philosophy  of  Don  Juan.  When 
a  man  stares  at  a  woman,  she  said,  he  uncon 
sciously  pays  her  a  compliment.  Like  the  knee  of 
the  faithful  reverently  bended  before  the  mon 
strance,  his  attitude  is  a  form  of  worship.  And 
every  kiss,  even  if  forced  from  reluctant  lips,  is  a 


102     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

prayer  at  the  shrine  of  Astarte,  a  virile  affirma 
tion  of  the  supremacy  of  the  sex.  Such  frankness 
would  have  been  unbecoming  in  a  descendant  of 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  It  was  refreshing  in  this 
glorious  daughter  of  Eve.  There  was  always  be 
tween  us,  too,  the  potentiality  of  affection.  The 
European  atmosphere  is  surcharged  with  sex  at 
traction.  In  America  the  ticker  is  the  substitute 
for  the  heart. 

As  I  write  this,  certain  brain  vibrations  shape 
themselves  into  the  enigmatic  smile  of  Francesca. 
If  Mona  Lisa  had  come  to  life,  she  would  have 
made  your  body  her  mansion !  You  are  somber 
like  her,  and  mysterious;  but,  unlike  her,  you  ar 
ticulate  the  meaning  of  your  existence.  We  might 
have  been  very  dear  to  each  other,  had  things 
been  different.  You  know  there  are  women  with 
whom,  for  some  curious  reason,  I  feel  as  intimate 
as  though  we  had  been  sweethearts  in  an  earlier 
incarnation.  You  are  one  of  these  women.  There 
is  nothing  petty  in  you.  With  a  miraculous  pa 
tience  you  listen  to  the  confessions  of  others.  You 
are  a  mother-confessor  who  knows  no  frown ;  only 
blessings  and  balm  flow  from  your  strangely  curved 
lips. 

I  never  quite  understood  your  interest  in  Aho- 
libah.  Aholibah,  to  be  sure,  was  intellectual,  even 
brilliant,  but  her  eyes  were  weary  from  too  much 
loving.  She  was  always  seeking  God,  but  her 
temples  tumbled,  being  built  in  the  flesh.  I  told 


SOME  WOMEN  103 

her  that  I  was  sadly  in  need  of  some  grande  pas 
sion.  "  Give  me,"  I  declaimed,  "  an  unrequited 
love!  "  She  promised;  but  nothing  came  of  it.  I 
saw  too  little  of  her,  perhaps.  Our  ways  there 
after  were  like  two  geometrical  lines  that  inter 
sect  at  infinity  only. 

Life  in  Berlin  was  so  strangely  colored  for  me, 
spiced  with  bewildering  passions.  The  New 
World  seems  stale  after  the  potions,  some  venom, 
some  wine,  quaffed  from  the  cup  of  the  Old.  I 
wonder  if  you  will  ever  read  this,  Marion,  strang 
est  and  shyest  of  all  my  loves.  I  shall  never  for 
get  that  evening  we  met  at  the  house  of ,  but 

I  must  be  careful;  he,  I  am  certain,  will  see  what 
I  write.  And  how  I  read  some  passionate  verses, 
and  how  my  voice  trembled  with  real  emotion,  and 
how  involuntarily  you  lowered  your  eyes.  And 
no  one  knew  that  every  word  of  my  mouth  was 
aimed  at  your  heart  like  an  arrow.  I  wasn't  sure 
you  knew,  except  when  we  said  good-bye.  Then 
I  said — I  forget  what  I  said.  You  will  remember, 
being  a  woman !  How  sweetly  you  smiled  when 
again  we  met.  And  then  that  curious  letter,  preg 
nant  with  strange  remorse !  I  wonder  why.  Per 
haps  it  is  well  we  parted  forever.  Exquisite  emo 
tions  are  not  easily  duplicated;  the  heart  is  more 
sensitive  than  the  photographer's  plate. 

And  then  your  namesake  swam  into  my  ken, 
and  again  love  wrote  its  purple  meaning  across  the 
sky.  This  Marion,  too,  loved  me  dearly.  She 


io4     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

bravely  tried  to  conceal  the  truth  from  me.  But 
when  I  suspected  her  kinship,  however  remote, 
with  the  throngs  that  people  the  Friedrichstrasse, 
the  wine  of  passion  turned  to  gall.  I  was  cruel  to 
her,  uncharitable;  and  I  know  that  some  day  I 
shall  be  punished  for  this. 

Valeria  was  her  successor — strange,  morbid, 
mad,  hysterical.  Her  lover  was  a  demon — 
morphine.  There  was  no  emotion,  bizarre  and 
unrestful,  with  which  her  soul  would  not  vibrate. 
Above  all,  she  loved  pain.  Her  love  for  me 
was  idolatrous.  I  cannot  describe  my  emotion 
for  her.  Passion  was  curiously  mixed  with  amaze 
ment. 

I  was  often  stunned  and  surprised  abroad.  I 
met  so  many  people  out  of  my  own  books!  I  had 
never  known  that  they  really  existed.  I  had  never 
met  them  at  Martin's.  They  had  hidden  their 
faces  from  me  in  America.  Yet,  here  they  were. 
I  recognized  the  type.  They  made  me  feel  creepy. 
I  understood  why  my  critics  had  objected  to  them. 
I  wouldn't  like  to  pass  my  life  amongst  them.  I 
am  not  sure  whether  I  ought  not  to  have  "  cut  " 
them.  In  the  purple  nights  of  Berlin  I  saw  for  the 
first  time  that  I  had  always  been  a  realist.  I  was 
sorry  for  the  figments  of  my  brain  when  I  beheld 
them  splendidly  clothed  in  the  flesh. 

I  was  most  sorry  for  you,  little  girl, — I  don't 
remember  your  name, — although  I  have  written 
a  poem  to  you : 


SOME  WOMEN  105 

O  little  siren  of  the  rose-white  skin, 
Reared  to  strange  music  and  to  stranger  sin, 
With  scornful  lips  that  move  to  no  man's  plea, 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me! 

Beneath  long  lashes,  downcast  eyes  and  coy, 

Yet  uninitiate  to  no  secret  joy! 

O  bud  burst  open  ere  her  day  begun, 

The  'virgin  and  the  strumpet  blent  in  one! 

Come  close  to  me!  Lay  your  small  hand  in  mine, 

And  drink  the  music  of  my  words  like  wine. 

And  let  me  touch  your  little  breasts  that  swell 

With  joy  remembered  where  her  kisses  fell. 

Ah!  she  whose  wise  caressive  fingers  strike 

Your  heart-strings  and  the  cithara  alike! 

By  what  love-potion  is  your  passion  fanned, 

What  is  the  magic  of  that  wary  hand? 

What  is  the  secret  of  her  strange  caress, 

Fierce  tortured  kisses,  or  the  tenderness 

That  woman  gives  to  woman — flame  or  snow? 

I,  too,  can  kiss  or  bruise  you;  you  shall  know 

That  love  like  mine  is  delicate  as  hers, 

Or  madder  still,  to  madder  passion  stirs, 

That  shall  consume  you  like  some  fiery  sea. 

O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me! 

Or  is  it  song  that  sets  your  blood  on  fire? 
Behold  in  me  no  novice  to  the  lyre. 
Who  is  this  woman  Sappho?  I  can  sing 
Like  her  of  Eros.   Yea,  each  voiceless  thing, 


io6     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

The  'very  rocks  of  Mytilene's  strand 
Shall  be  made  vocal  at  your  sweet  command. 
Hers  but  the  cooing  of  the  Lesbian  lutes, 
Mine  every  passion  in  the  heart  that  roots. 
Albeit  your  sweetness  lives  in  Sappho's  song, 
Her  love  is  barren  .  .  .  and  the  years  are  long. 
And  how  she  sang  and  how  she  loved  and  erred, 
Only  by  moonsick  women  will  be  heard. 
The  lyric  thunder  that  my  hand  has  hurled 
Shall  ring  with  resonant  music  through  the  world, 
Quickening  the  blood  in  every  lover's  breast. 
And  then  your  beauty  on  my  glory's  crest 
Shall  ride,  a  goddess,  to  eternity — 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me! 

Unscathed  in  Love's  dominion  I  have  been, 
And  still  a  sceptic  kissed  the  mouth  of  Sin. 
Love  seemed  the  dreariest  of  all  things  on  earth, 
Until  my  passion  filled  your  heart  with  mirth! 
Like  frightened  bird  my  cynic  wisdom  flies 
Before  the  cruel  candor  of  your  eyes. 
As  for  sweet  rain  a  valley  sick  with  drouth, 
Thus  thirsts  my  love  for  your  indifferent  mouth; 
And  still  your  thoughts  are  wandering  to  the  dell 
Where    Sappho    walks    and    where    her    minions 

dwell. 

Be  then,  of  maidens  most  corrupt,  most  chaste, 
The  one  delight  that  I  shall  never  taste! 
And  through  the  dreary  aons  yet  unborn, 
The  love  of  you  shall  rankle  like  a  thorn. 


SOME  WOMEN  107 

Leave  one  last  thrill  for  my  sad  heart  to  crave 
In  the  ennui  of  heaven  and  the  grave. 
Incite  my  passion;  my  embraces  flee — 
And  never,  never,  never  come  to  me! 

0  listen,  listen  to  my  heart-beat's  call! 
Aught  else  I  say,  it  is  not  true  at  all. 

She  has  her  maidens  whom  her  soft  ways  woo, 
And  they  to  her  are  no  less  dear  than  you. 
For  your  dear  sake  I  gladly  fling  aside 
Laurels  and  loves!  A  beggar  stripped  of  pride, 

1  only  know  I  need  you  more  than  she — 
O  little  Maid  of  Sappho,  come  to  me! 

Your  arms  were  lilies,  you  were  frail,  childlike ; 
but  your  eyes  peered  with  demoniacal  passion  into 
ancient  abysses  glittering  with  putrefaction.  Dear 
Little  Maid  of  Sappho,  how  I  might  have  loved 
you!  And  ah!  that  feverish  night  half  drowned 
in  champagne,  with  the  sinister  suggestions  of  an 
alien  Aphrodite.  I  was  not  strong  to  save  you. 
Besides,  I  had  no  time.  That  sounds  very  heart 
less.  I  am  afraid  I  am  too  egocentric  to  be  easily 
diverted  into  the  labyrinth  of  another's  soul.  Yet 
the  thought  of  you,  little  girl,  fills  me  with  a  vague 
unrest.  You  might  have  been  my  fate:  you  were 
hardly  an  episode.  Perhaps  we  shall  meet  again. 
But  you  will  then  be  beyond  salvation. 

We  often  speak  with  envy  of  the  romance  of 
forgotten  days.  Yet  if,  like  the  Yankee  Knight  at 


io8     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

King  Arthur's  court,  we  were  to  drop  backward 
through  time,  we  should  probably  find  life  squalid 
and  empty  of  roses.  Romance  dwells  not  without, 
but  within.  The  rose  of  romance  thrives  only 
miserably  in  the  heart  of  the  American  woman. 
The  two-headed  monster  of  self-consciousness 
and  self-seeking  chills  its  bloom  with  icy  breath. 
Americans  are  ashamed  of  their  emotions. 
Europeans  are  proud  of  them. 

Of  the  women  I  met  abroad,  Thusnelda,  above 
all  others,  knew  the  magic  that  transmutes  the 
dross  of  life  into  the  pure  gold  of  adventure. 
Every  one  she  met  became  a  tree  in  her  landscape 
of  dreams.  She  had  a  genius  for  being  unhappy. 
The  common  bread  of  life  became  ambrosia  in  her 
hands  if  only  she  could  moisten  it  with  tears.  She 
was  distinctly  a  blossom  of  a  civilization  grown 
weary  even  of  pleasure.  She  would  have  been 
morbid,  not  to  say  pathological,  had  she  been  an 
American.  But  in  Europe  the  strange  complex 
ities  of  her  temperament  were  not  at  variance  with 
the  complex  and  colorful  life  about  her. 

Thusnelda  preferred  a  wreath  of  thorns  to  a 
wreath  of  roses.  I  am  sure,  Thusnelda,  you  will 
not  take  it  amiss  if  I  quote  from  your  letters.  You 
wrote  some  things  that  I  should  love  to  have 
written.  I  shall  tear  your  golden  words  out  of  the 
jaws  of  oblivion.  Who  knows,  perhaps  this  will 
make  them  immortal.  I  would  have  no  objection 
to  your  printing  my  letters.  I  would  regard  it 


SOME  WOMEN  109 

as  a  compliment.  But  I  am  a  professional  writer, 
and  you  are  not.  I  cannot  afford  to  write  beauti 
ful  letters.  I  write  only  for  publication.  Besides, 
in  this  country,  the  honeyed  sonnets  of  lovers  are 
turned  into  nooses  to  strangle  their  authors  in 
divorce  suits  and  actions  for  breach  of  promise! 

I  remember  the  evening  Albertus  introduced  us. 
I  knew  how  madly  you  adored  him,  and  that  his 
heart  was  a  stone.  And  how  much  satisfaction 
you  got  out  of  your  misplaced  affection.  And  how 
I  fell  sick,  and  how  kindly  you  nursed  me,  sus 
pecting  perhaps  the  possibility  of  a  tragic  affec 
tion. 

I  am  afraid  you  idealized  me,  as  you  idealized 
all  things.  I  know  that  in  appearance  I  am  not 
very  poetic.  I  wear  my  hair  short.  I  am  a  well- 
preserved  young  man,  notwithstanding  my  twenty- 
five  years,  but  I  don't  look  the  poet.  You  are 
right:  I  should  have  been  dark.  But  how  well 
you  said  it.  I  think  it  was  in  your  second  letter: 

"  When  God  made  you,"  you  wrote,  "  He 
willed  to  make  you  dark-complexioned  and  dark  of 
hair,  like  some  Italian  or  an  Assyrian  prince.  But 
seeing  that  your  hair  was  golden,  he  made  your 
heart  black!  But  no,  I  lie!  It  is  more  wicked  to 
call  you  evil  than  any  dream  of  evil  that  ever  your 
delicate  soul  has  conceived. 

"  How  lovely  are  even  the  demons  of  your  In 
ferno!  Can  you  help  it  if  your  roses  are  drops  of 


no     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

blood,  and  your  songs  poison-flowers?  Ah!  Those 
demons!  They  have  stood  by  my  cradle,  too,  and 
often  I  hearkened  to  their  voices  when  the  wind 
whistled  around  the  walls  of  my  paternal  castle. 
Comraded  by  them  I  drifted  upon  the  river  of  my 
youth.  Sometimes  they  smile  upon  me  out  of  the 
deep  eyes  of  my  lover.  They  will  hover  over  my 
grave  and  chant  an  uncouth  melody  over  this  pas 
sionate  heart  of  mine,  that  ever  yearned  for  roses, 
and  ever  kissed  the  thorns! 

"7  am  fond  of  you:  I  can  never  love  you.  I 
can  only  love  the  setting  sun,  when  far  away  he 
crimsons  the  sky  with  yearning  and  with  blood;  or 
the  perfume  of  jessamine;  or  the  cry  of  the  wild 
heron  fleeing  from  autumnal  days  into  sunnier 
regions;  or  the  soul  of  Albertus  Magnus,  where 
sunset  and  odor  and  the  freedom  of  wild  things 
are  woven  into  one.  But  you  should  not  have  sent 
me  those  poems.  They  knock  at  the  door  of  my 
heart  and  whisper,  and  plaintively  call  to  me 
through  the  night."  .... 

I  had  not  been  interested  in  that  woman  until  I 
received  her  letter.  She  had  made  a  poem  of  our 
commonplace  meeting.  Prose  could  not  nestle  in 
the  folds  of  her  garments;  neither  could  sin  soil 
her  feet.  Everything  she  touched  became  strange 
and  romantic. 

We  subsequently  spent  a  happy  evening  to 
gether.  Thusnelda  bared  her  soul  to  me,  and  I 


SOME  WOMEN  in 

am  afraid  I  was  a  little  shocked  by  some  of  the 
things  she  said.  But  that  evening,  charming  as 
it  was,  had  not  prepared  me  for  the  following  let 
ter.  In  Thusnelda's  imagination,  our  meeting  had 
blossomed  forth  into  a  flower,  glorious  and 
golden;  and  when  I  re-read  her  letter  I  knew  she 
was  right.  For  there  are  miracles  everywhere. 
But  we  have  eyes  that  see  not,  and  ears  that  hear 
not.  The  voice  of  Romance  is  audible  in  America 
only  to  poets  and  artists,  and  even  they  are  a  little 
ashamed  of  being  different  from  others.  This  is 
the  letter: 

"  Oh  Night  of  all  Nights!  Like  a  fairy  tale,  so 
different,  so  miraculous  and  so  strange!  Why  do 
you  -peer  so  questioningly  into  my  world?  Are 
your  eyes  so  darkened  that  you  can  no  longer  look 
upon  nudity,  and  turn  half  terrified  from  the 
naked  soul?  In  my  Kingdom  there  are  only  souls, 
naked  and  free  and  -pure  as  in  Paradise.  Not  that 
Paradise  where  the  forbidden  tree  rustles  prurient 
suggestions;  but  in  that  woodland  evergreen  where 
the  gods  walk  with  men,  and  beget  a  powerful  race 
to  which  no  Eden  is  out  of  reach,  and  no  precipice 
too  deep  to  be  sounded. 

"All  that  happens  in  the  name  of  beauty  and 
of  greatness  must  be  great  and  beautiful  forever. 
We  must  be  what  the  God  in  us  determines  us  to 
be.  The  riddle  of  the  Universe  is  child's  play  if 
once  we  know  nature  is  beauty,  beauty  nature; 


ii2     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 


and  if  we  carry  God  in  our  hearts,  our  lives 
be  prayer.  But  to  -pray  is  to  yearn,  to  hope,  to 
thank.  These  things  I  can  give  to  you.  Never  ask 
more  of  me,  but  remember  that  I  am  the  hand 
maid  and  lover  of  one  who  shall  never  touch  me, 
and  never  love  me.  My  love  for  him  is  sacred, 
and,  like  the  host,  may  not  be  divided.  Pray  for 
me!"  .... 

It  will  be  supremely  difficult  for  the  healthy 
American  animal  to  comprehend  sympathetically 
the  complexities  of  this  woman.  Neither  can  we 
understand  that  the  non-attainment  of  desire  may 
be  more  strangely  seductive  to  imaginative  na 
tures  than  brutal  and  often  unlovely  realization. 
I  confess  that  I  myself  was  sorely  puzzled  at  first 
by  Thusnelda;  but  surely  she  has  made  my  life 
richer  and  deeper,  and  unlocked  for  me  gardens 
of  spiritual  passion,  stranger  and  fiercer  than  rap 
tures  that  root  in  the  flesh.  And  I  must  also  admit 
that  I  have  had  strong  revulsions  of  feeling 
against  her,  and  that  on  the  whole  I  am  glad  that 
she  will  be  unique  in  my  life. 

But  surely  Europe  has  strange  allurements  and 
secrets  for  barbarians  from  overseas. 

Let  me  here  set  down  the  story  of  Gwendolen, 
the  lov.ely  bride  of  my  childhood.  We  had  been 
lovers  since  I  was  six  and  she  was  four.  My  love 
for  her,  I  admit,  was  not  my  first  romantic  attach 
ment,  but  the  only  one  the  perfume  of  which  has 


SOME  WOMEN  113 

clung  to  me  through  the  years.  Before  I  met  her, 
I  believe,  I  wanted  to  marry  our  janitor's  daugh 
ter,  the  family  cook — good  old  camel! — and  a 
beautiful  princess  forty  years  my  senior,  whom 
George  Meredith  has  made  the  heroine  of  one  of 
his  novels,  and  who  was  a  friend  of  my  mother. 
That  was  many  years  ago,  but  the  fire  in  her  hair 
and  in  her  heart  will  never  go  out.  I  speak  of 
Helene  von  Racovitza. 

Gwendolen  had  lovely  brown  ringlets.  She  was 
the  most  beautiful  child  I  have  ever  seen.  As  I 
look  upon  her  picture  now,  I  clearly  see  that  she 
was  one  of  those  elfin  creatures,  who,  like  Peter 
Pan,  cannot  abide  on  earth.  We  were  parted 
when  I  was  ten.  I  crossed  the  seas.  We  seldom 
wrote  to  each  other.  And  then,  some  years  later, 
she  died.  Strange  to  say,  her  death  hardly  stirred 
me.  But  when  I  went  abroad,  recently,  for  the 
first  time  since  my  childhood,  I  called  on  her 
mother,  and  then  my  youthful  love  came  back  to 
me  with  curious  insistence.  The  mother,  sweet 
woman,  opened  a  little  parcel  of  the  dead  girl's 
hair,  and  told  me  how  Gwendolen  had  often 
spoken  of  me.  When  I  was  expected  at  the  house, 
she  had  always  asked  for  a  new  pinafore  and 
looked  at  herself  in  the  mirror,  anxiously  asking: 
"  Do  you  think  that  he  will  like  me  in  this?" 

Never  do  we  more  poignantly  realize  our  hu 
man  impotence  than  when  we  vainly  beat  against 
the  gray  gate  of  eternity,  striving  to  wrest  the 


n4     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

wraith  of  one  we  love  from  the  iron  embrace  of 
the  relentless  void.  The  winged  seraphs  of  heaven 
have  carried  her  away  to  a  distant  Ajden  where 
perchance  Annabel  Lee  welcomes  her  Tis  a  play 
mate.  While  these  fancies  flitted  'through  my 
brain,  the  Jehu  of  my  taxicab  sat  grinning  at  his 
wheel.  Every  minute  of  my  pain  was  registered  by 
the  click  of  his  meter.  Every  tear  of  my  heart  was 
an  added  obolus  in  his  pocket. 

From  out  the  sea  of  faces  of  women  in  scarlet, 
of  all  my  loves,  curious  and  brilliant-hued,  this 
one  child's  memory  still  abides  beckoning  to  me 
from  the  Old  World.  Her  little  ghost  will  never 
see  this.  She  will  never  know  how  tenderly  I 
think  of  her.  But  can  she  really  be  dead?  When 
the  thought  of  her,  even  now,  almost  brings  tears 
to  my  eyes?  Maeterlinck  is  right.  No  one  is  dead, 
who  still  lives  in  the  hearts  of  others. 

But,  good  folks,  accept  my  apologies.  This  has 
nothing  to  do  with  Europe. 


CHAPTER  X 

INTELLECTUAL    DRAMA 

IT  is  queer  to  have  anybody  ask  you  whether 
you  have  seen  your  grandmother's  statue,  and  to 
confess  that  you  have  not.  That  is  exactly  what 
happened  to  me  when  I  came  to  Berlin.  Edwina 
Viereck  had  died  many  years  before  I  was  born. 
I  had  read  of  her  beauty,  and  I  had  discovered, 
among  my  father's  papers,  some  diaries  penned  by 
her  hand.  We  had  pictures  of  her  at  home,  but  I 
never  had  as  much  personal  interest  in  my  grand 
mother  as  I  have  had  in  Helen  of  Troy  Town. 
But  when  I  stood  within  the  Royal  Playhouse  at 
Berlin  before  her  loveliness  hewn  in  marble,  it 
seemed  to  me  as  though  I  felt  for  a  moment  upon 
my  forehead  the  impress  of  her  lips. 

I  was  almost  convinced  that  in  the  foyer,  which 
had  once  re-echoed  with  her  praise,  I  met  the  ghost 
of  Edwina  Viereck.  I  feel  akin  to  her  now.  I 
can  almost  see  her  as  she  appeared  on  the  stage. 
She  is  said  to  have  been  most  wonderful  in  Schil 
ler's  Turandot,  which  nobody  plays  nowadays, 
when  she  challenged  the  beholder  to  look  upon 
her  beauty  and  not  lose  his  reason.  And  there  is  a 


n6     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

poem,  I  have  forgotten  by  whom,  in  which  "  der 
Fiereck  wunderschones  Haupt"  is  recounted  in 
rapturous  phrases.  I  was  elated  at  first  by  that 
laurel-wreathed  bust.  It  isn't  everybody  whose 
grandmother  is  immortalized  in  marble  at  the 
Royal  Playhouse  in  Berlin. 

Yet  there  was  something  saddening  to  me  in 
the  vision.  Every  statue  is  a  memento  of  the 
evanescence  of  human  life.  There  is  something 
pathetic  in  the  smile  frozen  in  marble,  while  the 
beautiful  lips  of  the  woman  herself  are  choked 
with  dust  and  corruption.  Besides,  I  was  a  little 
jealous  that  her  image  should  smile  upon  others 
as  it  smiled  upon  me,  her  grandson.  I  could  ap 
preciate  why  the  children  of  famous  people  often 
feel  injured  when  strangers  write  understandingly 
of  their  parents.  This  curious  egotism  even 
prompts  them  sometimes  to  belittle  a  great  man 
departed,  if  only  to  indicate  that  their  knowledge 
of  him  is  more  intimate  than  the  world's. 

We  would  be  shocked  if  we  saw  the  bleaching 
bones  of  our  immediate  progenitors  exposed  to 
the  gaze  of  the  many  in  a  museum  of  anatomy. 
Are  we  not  humanly  justified,  therefore,  if  we  re 
sent  an  autopsy  of  their  soul?  If  Mrs.  Browning 
had  been  my  mother,  I  would  not  like  to  listen  to 
other  people's  interpretations  of  her  passional 
sonnets.  And  yet  I  am  fully  aware  that  all  art  is 
a  form  of  exhibitionism. 

In    the    Harvard    Psychological  Laboratory  I 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA         117 

once  saw  little  white  mice  revolving  in  a  circle, 
crazily,  without  pause,  like  dancing  dervishes. 
Generations  ago,  Asiatic  cunning  had  destroyed 
the  sense  of  equilibrium  in  their  ancestors  to  make 
toys  of  them  for  the  delectation  of  almond-eyed 
women.  So  these,  too,  turn  ever  in  a  vicious  circle, 
imagining,  no  doubt,  perpetual  gyration  the 
proper  and  logical  state  of  mouse.  Even  thus  we, 
I  sometimes  fancy,  obey  not  our  own  volition,  but 
the  monstrous  caprice  of  an  alien  will.  There  is 
an  irresistible — scientists  would  say  compulsory 
— impulse  that  urges  our  pens  and  animates 
our  chisels.  We  flout  our  nakedness  in  the  mar 
ket-place,  and  turn  our  grandmothers  into 
copy! 

My  mother's  father,  Wilhelm  Viereck,  was  the 
founder  of  the  German  Theater  in  San  Francisco. 
My  father's  mother  was  Edwina  Viereck.  Never 
theless,  I  have  not  inherited  from  my  grandpar 
ents  any  instinctive  love  for  the  stage,  although  I 
have  been  in  intimate  relation  with  the  theater  all 
my  life.  Our  theatrical  conditions  are  hardly 
calculated  to  foster  such  a  love.  The  drama  in 
America  is  the  lowest  of  the  arts.  She  is  the 
handmaid  of  the  mimic  propensity  inherited  by 
us  from  our  simian  sires.  Theatricalism  has 
chained  the  Muse  to  the  wheel  of  its  motor. 
Plays  are  written  to  order.  The  author's  name 
hardly  appears  on  the  program. 

I  have  never  been  one  of  those  who  place  the 


n8     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

drama  on  the  uppermost  rung  of  the  ladder  of  art. 
A  poem,  a  statue,  a  picture  is  wonderful,  each  in 
itself.  It  needs  no  interpreters.  It  summons  no 
other  art  or  artifice  to  its  aid.  The  drama  de 
pends  for  its  support  on  various  scaffoldings,  al 
though  the  great  dramas  of  Shakespeare  and 
.ZEschylus  are  no  less  effective  in  the  closet  than 
on  the  stage.  The  little  dramas  of  contemporary 
American  playwrights,  like  fairy-gold  when  the 
charm  is  withdrawn,  are  tatters  and  rags  if  di 
vorced  from  the  footlights.  The  great  dramatists 
have  written  to  express  themselves.  We  write  to 
express  others,  usually  actors  of  inferior  mental 
caliber.  Shakespeare  garbed  the  body  of  the 
Muse  with  new  splendor.  We,  with  rare  excep 
tions,  manufacture  dramatic  tinsel  to  cover  up  the 
mental  and  physical  deficiencies  of  some  over- 
advertised  female. 

In  Shakespeare's  days  the  mimes  were  called 
"  shadows."  The  substance,  the  play,  remained 
after  their  exit.  In  America  to-day  the  play  is 
the  shadow.  We  have  no  brains  for  abstractions 
either  in  politics  or  aesthetics.  We  are  swayed 
solely  by  the  personality  of  the  actor.  Julia  Mar 
lowe  is  more  real  to  us  than  Shakespeare  himself. 
We  place  the  shadow  above  the  substance.  In 
America  the  playwright  is  successful  if  he  adapts 
himself  to  the  actor.  Abroad  the  actor  is  success 
ful  if  he  adapts  himself  to  the  playwright.  Abroad 
they  have  great  dramas  and  great  actors.  We 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA         119 

have  no  dramas.  And  we  develop  not  actors,  but 
virtuosi. 

There  are  many  theaters  in  Berlin, — I  don't 
know  how  many.  The  royal  theaters,  being  bul 
warks  of  conservatism,  are  not  regarded  seriously 
by  the  critics.  The  interest  of  the  elect  centers 
around  the  two  great  rival  playhouses  of  Brahms 
and  of  Reinhardt,  the  Lessing  Theater  and  the 
Deutsche  Theater.  Brahms  stands  for  realism, 
Reinhardt  for  everything  else.  Brahms  has  dis 
covered  Ibsen  for  Germany.  Reinhardt  is  a  cere 
bral  Belasco.  Belasco  wrings  our  hearts.  Rein 
hardt  excites  our  brains.  Germany  looks  to  him 
for  curious  and  gorgeous  intellectual  experiments. 
Reinhardt  has  discovered  Shakespeare,  and,  of 
late,  he  discovered  Goethe.  Or,  to  be  more  pre 
cise,  he  has  rediscovered  the  classics.  He  takes 
Faust  or  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  and  trans 
lates  the  language  of  centuries  gone  into  the  lan 
guage  of  the  twentieth  century.  His  Faust  is  a 
modern.  His  Romeos  and  his  Juliets  are  our  con 
temporaries.  He  makes  no  impious  attempt  to 
superimpose  his  own  meanings  upon  those  of  the 
author,  but  he  strikingly  interprets  and  brilliantly 
illuminates  him. 

I  am  not  surprised  that  Berlin  refused  to  accept 
Beerbohm  Tree's  dazzling  but  superficial  versions 
of  Shakespeare.  Sothern  would  probably  meet 
with  a  similar  disastrous  fate.  The  Germans  are 
the  greatest  interpreters  of  Shakespeare.  They 


120     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

are  in  sympathy  with  him.  They  understand  him 
—all  of  him.  I  never  understood  Shakespeare  until 
I  had  seen  King  Lear  and  As  You  Like  It  staged 
by  Reinhardt  and  Felix  Hollander,  his  able  as 
sistant.  There  is  no  nuance  they  permit  to  escape 
them.  They  interpret  alike  the  lovely  and  the 
coarse.  They  discover  even  in  the  plays  some 
thing  of  the  spirit  of  the  mysterious  Sonnets. 
There  are  moments  when  Mr.  W.  H.  flits  across 
the  stage.  The  smile  of  the  Shakespeare  bust 
seems  less  enigmatic  than  of  yore,  his  personality 
less  inscrutable  and  less  distant,  after  we  have 
caught  glimpses  of  his  face  in  that  playhouse  of 
Reinhardt's. 

Reinhardt  employs  a  revolving  stage,  consisting 
of  several  sections.  Each  of  these  sections  is  a 
stage  in  itself.  Only  one  at  a  time  is  seen  by  the 
audience.  This  arrangement  enables  the  stage 
manager  to  shift  his  scenes  with  incredible  swift 
ness.  Shakespeare  thereby  regains  the  spontaneity 
which  he  loses  when  the  scenes  are  torn  out  of 
their  logical  artistic  sequence  by  the  requirements 
of  modern  stage-craft.  Reinhardt  sometimes  per 
mits  the  stage  to  rotate  with  the  curtain  up,  re 
vealing  a  succession  of  pictures  displaying  the 
characters  in  their  simultaneous  actions.  We  see 
how,  behind  the  scenes,  they  carry  out  the  poet's 
intentions.  Thus  we  visualize  the  action,  as  it 
must  have  evolved  in  the  brain  of  Shakespeare. 

Adjoining  the  Deutsche  Theater  Reinhardt  has 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA         121 

reared  a  shrine  to  art — with  a  capital  A.  The 
Chamber-plays  (Kammerspiele)  are  to  the  drama 
what  chamber  music  is  to  the  opera.  The  little 
theater  housing  the  chamber-plays  is  a  jewel-box 
lined  with  silk.  Everything  is  subdued  and  costly. 
Costumed  attendants  silently  hand  you  the  pro 
gram.  Prices  are  almost  prohibitive.  The  intel 
lectual  middle  classes  are  barred  with  triple  brass 
from  this  holy  of  holies.  The  elect  go  to  the 
Chamber-plays  as  reverently  as  one  goes  to  church. 
Sometimes  the  silence  becomes  almost  audible. 

Strange  women  in  strange  garbs,  and  uncouth 
men  with  curious  beards  and  long  hair,  the  Super 
men's  Brigade,  are  here  assembled  in  solemn  con 
clave  with  the  aristocracy  of  birth  and  finance. 
There  are  furs,  and  antique  brooches,  wristbands 
serpentine  and  suggestive,  shimmering  velvets  and 
rustling  silks.  The  faces  of  the  beholders  are 
placid.  Aloof,  intellectual,  calm,  they  analyze  the 
performance.  Emotion  is  suppressed.  No  ap 
plause  is  permitted.  The  intellectual  pabulum 
presented  at  the  Chamber-plays  is  distinctly  haut- 
gout.  We  know  what  awaits  us.  We  must  not 
be  surprised  at  anything.  In  this  assemblage 
Stirner  is  a  truism,  Nietzsche  passe.  They  would 
listen  with  imperturbable  intellectual  hauteur  to 
stage  adaptations  from  the  medical  data  of  Mag 
nus  Hirschfeld  and  Havelock  Ellis. 

The  actors  are  men  and  women  endowed  with 
brains.  They  have  a  serious  interest  in  art.  Act- 


122     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

ing  to  them  is  more  than  "  business."  They  are 
all  individualities  with  the  stamp  of  genius,  who 
willingly  submerge  their  egos  in  the  harmonious 
whole.  Wherever  Reinhardt  rules,  intellectual 
values  are  at  a  premium.  Style  determines  des 
tinies.  Bernard  Shaw  thrives  in  his  care.  The 
Chamber-Play  House  is  the  citadel  of  the  bizarre. 
It  is  a  hot-house  for  exotic  genius,  a  mansion  of 
many  moods.  Within  its  confine  poets  may  safely 
play  with  intellectual  lightning.  The  psychologist 
may  with  impunity  empty  his  vials  of  pestilential 
bacilli. 

This  public  is  immune  against  every  mental 
disease.  Unlike  the  naive  audiences  of  our  Ameri 
can  play-houses,  we  find  here  grown  men  who  have 
passed  safely  through  the  ailments  of  intellectual 
immaturity.  Schnitzler's  orgasmic  Reigen  leaves 
them  unstartled.  The  hysterical  Greeks  of  Hugo 
von  Hofmannsthal,  that  brilliant  young  Viennese, 
arouse  a  responsive  chord  in  their  breasts.  They 
smile  contemptuously  at  Max  Halbe's  Jugend — 
not  a  single  character  in  that  play  might  have 
been  lifted  from  Krafft-Ebing's  Psychopathia 
Sexualls.  But  they  accept  at  their  proper  value 
Wedekind's  dramatic  grotesques.  They  appre 
ciate  Fruhtings  Erwachen. 

Let  me  tell  you  about  Friihling's  Erwachen 
(Springs  Awakening).  Wedekind,  its  author,  is 
two-fifths  a  clown  and  three-fifths  a  genius.  He 
is  peculiar,  bizarre,  uneven.  But  in  Friihling's 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA         123 

Erwachen  he  has  produced  a  masterpiece,  because 
the  subject,  puberty,  is  in  tune  with  his  unbalanced 
genius.  His  individual  mood  for  once  coincides 
with  a  world  mood. 

Wedekind's  play,  the  Salome  of  Wilde,  Barrie's 
Peter  Pan,  and  Shaw's  Casar  and  Cleopatra  are 
to  my  mind  the  four  representative  plays  of  the 
century. 

Peter  Pan  embodies  the  imperishable  longing 
for  eternal  youth ;  being  very  young,  he  is  conscious 
of  the  insufferable  burthen  of  years  upon  the 
shoulders  of  the  race.  For  in  youth,  as  Words 
worth  knew,  we  are  still  close  to  the  infinite.  He 
stands  upon  the  beginning  of  an  arch  in  the  bridge 
of  time  spanning  the  void  between  being  and  not- 
being.  His  backward  glance  more  surmises  than 
sees  glimpses  of  chains  unending.  Casar  and 
Cleopatra  is  the  supreme  expression  of  sophistica 
tion.  Shaw's  Caesar  is  the  Superman  conscious  of 
his  part  in  the  world's  evolution.  He  attains 
through  cerebration  what  Peter  Pan  knows  by  in 
stinct.  Salome  is  the  gorgeous  encasement  of 
morbid  beauty  and  misdirected  desire.  The 
theme  of  Wedekind's  Friihling's  Erwachen  is  uni 
versally  human.  The  dramatist  unfolds  before 
our  eyes  puberty  with  its  pure  and  ecstatic  affec 
tions  and  its  curious  sensual  nightmares.  Wilde, 
with  the  unfailing  veracity  of  the  great  poet,  has 
doomed  Salome  in  his  play,  as  she  is  doomed  in  the 
process  of  evolution.  Normal  humanity,  of 


i24     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

which  Wedekind's  youthful  hero,  Melchior,  is  a 
typical  incarnation,  overcomes  the  perils  besetting 
its  path.  Wedekind's  hero  dallies  with  death,  as 
we  all  dally  with  death,  but  in  the  end  life  is  tri 
umphant. 

The  supreme  moment  in  Wedekind's  play  is  the 
scene  in  the  graveyard,  where  the  boy  wavers  be 
tween  life  and  death.  His  old  playfellow,  who 
had  blown  out  his  brains,  stands  there  with  his 
head  under  his  arm,  preaching  the  doctrine  of  con 
tentment  in  Nirvana.  At  this  moment  there 
appears  Life,  a  gentleman  with  a  mask,  cynical, 
cruel  and  lavish  and  kind.  He  orders  the  dead 
boy  to  return  to  the  grave,  and  declares  that  the 
philosophy  of  resignation  is  the  philosophy  of  sour 
grapes.  With  fine  and  healthy  cynicism  he  invites 
Melchior  to  supper.  "  After  what  I  have  done," 
Melchior  exclaims,  "  no  supper  can  bring  peace  to 
my  soul."  "  That,"  remarks  the  gentleman,  "  de 
pends  on  the  supper."  They  go  out  together,  Life 
and  the  boy,  deserting  the  tombs  for  the  banquet. 
The  dead  boy  takes  his  head  under  his  arm  and 
resignedly  returns  to  his  coffin,  murmuring  to  him 
self,  "  Now  I  shall  raise  my  tombstone,  which 
that  clumsy  chap  has  upset,  warm  my  hands  in  cor 
ruption  and  smile.  ..." 

In  the  history  of  dramatic  literature  there  is 
worthy  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with 
the  finale  of  Wedekind's  play  only  the  graveyard 
scene  in  Hamlet.  But  it  is  not  the  sort  of  thing 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA          125 

to  which  the  Tired  Business  Man — that  atrocious 
bogey  raised  whenever  Art  lifts  her  head  in  the 
American  theater — would  repair  for  a  tonic. 

The  intellectual  stamp  dooms  a  play  to  failure 
in  America.  The  absence  of  it  dooms  it  to  failure 
abroad.  Of  course,  The  Merry  Widow  is  an  im 
portation  from  Europe.  And  even  abroad,  I  ad 
mit,  the  Merry  Widow  waltz  was  more  popular 
than  the  dance  of  Salome.  But  a  distinction  is 
made  between  entertainment  and  art.  We  cater 
only  to  entertainment.  And  if  we  have  an  idea, 
we  attempt  to  disguise  the  intellectual  germ  in  a 
thick  layer  of  saccharine  sentiment  and  theatrical 
clap-trap.  Mentality  is  written  over  the  stage 
door  abroad.  Cerebral,  restless,  the  German  mind 
seeks  ever  for  new  spheres  of  expression.  Thus, 
the  late  Meta  Illing,  a  distinguished  and  beautiful 
actress,  endeavored  to  speak  to  her  compatriots 
through  the  medium  of  English.  Her  English 
Theater  was  intended  primarily  for  the  Germans, 
not  for  English  and  American  visitors,  and  was  pat 
ronized  by  the  Kaiser.  If  some  manager  were  to 
put  on  The  Sunken  Bell  in  Chinese  he  would  like 
wise  find  an  interested  audience,  at  least  in  Ber 
lin.  Goethe's  Iphigenia  was  played  in  Esperanto 
under  the  direction  of  Emanuel  Reicher.  There 
is  everywhere  the  desire  to  conquer  new  ter 
ritory  by  shattering  the  barriers  of  foreign 
tongues.  A  tendency  toward  universality  is 
conspicuous. 


126     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Frau  Dumont,  of  Diisseldorf,  has  attempted  to 
purge  the  drama  with  its  eternal  problems  from 
purely  local  associations.  She  has  abolished  deco 
ration,  and  everything  merely  temporal  or  limiting 
the  message  of  art.  There  are  no  properties,  no 
scenery  at  all.  Her  background  consists  merely  of 
an  immense  sheet  of  linen,  sometimes  with  chro 
matic  borders,  and  illuminated  from  behind  with 
simple,  dominant  colors  defining  the  basic  mood  of 
the  scene.  There  are  no  footlights,  nothing  to  dis 
tract  the  attention  from  the  words  of  the  poet. 
Frau  Dumont's  method  should  be  tremendously 
effective  in  staging  the  mystic  plays  of  Maeter 
linck  and  of  Yeats,  where  the  characters,  vague 
and  elusive,  pass  shadowlike  before  our  vision. 
The  revolving  stage  is  the  proper  medium 
for  Shakespeare  with  his  definite  outlines 
and  his  vivid  perceptions  of  life.  The  stage 
of  Frau  Dumont,  with  its  glimpses  of  in 
finity  and  vague  suggestions,  represents  aptly  the 
unique  mentality  of  the  author  of  The  Death  of 
Tintagiles. 

Satiated  with  all  things,  the  ancient  civilizations 
are  ever  ready  to  hail  the  new.  Out  of  the  mental 
unrest  of  modern  Germany  is  born  the  tenth  of  the 
Muses,  the  new  art  of  nudity.  Many  things  that 
once  were  natural  are  to-day  arts.  There  was  a 
time  when  men's  motions  were  naturally  graceful, 
when  dance  was  instinctive.  But  in  the  course  of 
time  mankind  forgot;  and  what  was  once  a  func- 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA         127 

tion  of  every  human  being,  is  resurrected  to-day  in 
the  polished  art  of  Isadora  Duncan.  Song,  we  are 
told,  is  older  than  speech.  The  conversation  of 
men  in  olden  days  was  rhythmic.  Poetry  to-day  is 
an  art  confined  to  the  few.  In  the  golden  ages 
of  the  Greeks  and  in  the  Paradise  of  the  Hebrew, 
men  were  splendid  and  nude.  Then  came  sin, 
and  we  swathed  our  bodies  in  hideous  clothes,  and 
were  ashamed  of  them.  And  so  long  have  we  hid 
den  and  marred  them,  that  at  last  nudeness,  like 
singing  and  dancing,  has  become  an  accomplish 
ment. 

The  two  chief  German  exponents  of  the  new  art 
are  Olga  Desmond  and  Herr  Salge,  who  have 
given  a  number  of  performances  in  Berlin  before 
the  Society  of  the  Friends  of  Beauty,  and  later  in 
public,  in  which  they  went  perfectly  nude  through 
a  series  of  beautiful  poses.  They  made  the  curves 
of  their  bodies  express  meanings  as  definite  as 
sculpture  and  music.  The  Greeks,  I  am  sure, 
would  have  welcomed  this  new  addition  to  the 
ranks  of  the  Muses.  But  in  Germany,  as  I  have 
said,  the  incarnation  of  Euphorion  is  not  as  yet 
wholly  consummated.  The  new  art  was  hotly  dis 
cussed  throughout  the  Empire,  and  the  police  were 
called  upon  to  interfere  with  Olga  Desmond's 
performances  outside  of  Berlin.  The  matter 
was  debated  in  the  Reichstag,  and,  strange  to 
say,  the  Government  itself  took  up  the  cudgels  for 
the  new  Muse  of  Nudity.  The  Reichstag  attended 


128    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

in  a  body  one  of  Olga  Desmond's  performances. 
Imagine  how  Congress  would  behave  in  an  analo 
gous  instance! 

Distinguished  artists,  among  these  Reinhold 
Begas,  and  Professor  Herter,  the  creator  of  the 
Heine  fountain  in  New  York,  hastened  to  the  de 
fense  of  Desmond.  Begas  insisted  that  the  naked 
body  cannot  arouse  prurient  speculation.  "  Ana 
lyze  your  feelings,"  he  said,  "  and  you  will  realize 
that  the  erotic  element  hardly  enters."  Herter  as 
serted  that  the  nude  body,  at  a  proper  distance  in 
a  beautiful  pose,  is  always  aesthetic.  "  I  would 
not  know,"  he  said,  "  how  to  represent  sensuality 
nude."  An  interesting  point  was  made  by  Profes 
sor  Goetz.  Often,  in  seeing  a  picture,  a  landscape, 
we  joyfully  exclaim,  "  Why,  I  have  witnessed  that 
effect  before  in  nature."  In  a  similar  manner  we 
are  more  apt  to  appreciate  the  nude  in  sculpture 
if  we  have  stored  in  our  minds  perceptions  of 
beautiful  nude  bodies.  This  "  sad  late  age  "  is  ex 
tremely  poor  in  these;  so  poor,  indeed,  that  the 
public  interest  is  almost  exclusively  confined  to  the 
head,  because  we,  most  of  us,  have  no  opportuni 
ties  to  see  beautiful  bodies. 

The  new  art  of  nudity,  as  we  have  seen,  has  so 
far  been  primarily  defended  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  sculptor.  When  the  renaissance  of 
the  Hellenic  spirit  in  the  twentieth  century  is  com 
plete,  it  will  need  no  defense  beyond  its  beauty. 
The  Muse  of  Nudity  is  not  the  youngest,  but  the 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA         129 

oldest  of  all  the  Muses.  In  her  domain,  the  ex 
tremes  of  civilization,  the  sophisticated  and  primi 
tive  nature,  are  blended.  We  are  no  more  ready 
for  her  than  were  the  monks  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Before  an  audience  composed,  even  partly,  of  Car 
rie  Nations  and  of  Anthony  Comstocks,  the  art 
of  nakedness  would  be  a  thing  obscene. 

The  founders  of  our  own  New  Theater  would 
never  invite  the  tenth  of  the  Muses  to  reveal  with 
in  its  sacred  precincts  the  miracle  of  her  loveliness. 
This  theater,  declared  Governor  Hughes,  at  the 
formal  opening,  November  6th,  1909,  shall  be 
devoted  to  art.  But  it  shall  never  become  a 
"  museum  of  abnormalities."  Yet  what  is  all  art 
but  a  museum  of  abnormalities?  Hamlet,  Mac 
beth,  Lear,  the  tortured  creatures  of  Hauptmann 
and  of  Ibsen,  are  hardly  conventional  normal 
types.  In  biology  the  exception  proves  the  rule. 
Art  through  the  abnormal  depicts  the  normal. 
Perfectly  normal  people  are  perfectly  dull.  The 
dramatic  struggle  calls  for  the  contention  between 
conventional  and  eccentric  social  forces. 

The  province  of  art  is  to  provide  caviar  for  the 
general.  If  the  general  refuse  this  fare,  then,  in 
deed,  are  we  in  a  difficult  plight.  Instead  of  intel 
ligence  endowed  with  millions,  let  us  have  mill 
ions  endowed  with  intelligence.  Intelligent  artis 
tic  appreciation  is  rare  in  native  America.  The 
intellectual  founder  of  the  New  Theater,  Heinrich 
Conried,  was  an  Austrian  subject.  The  first  great 


i3o    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

essentially  American  play,  The  Melting  Pot,  was 
written  by  an  English  Jew.  And  it  is  perhaps  sig 
nificant  that  the  first  American  author  heard  in 
the  New  Theater  bears  the  aromatic  and  un-Amer 
ican  name  of  Knoblauch. 

Yet  I  am  perhaps  unjust  to  the  American  play 
wright.  Clyde  Fitch's  last  play,  The  City,  is  almost 
Elizabethan  in  its  terror  and  its  strength.  Charles 
Klein  and  Augustus  Thomas  may  yet  purge  their 
systems  of  the  germs  of  moralomania.  We  shall 
have  to  reckon  with  them  again  when  they  redis 
cover  that  in  the  drama  action  speaks  louder  than 
words.  William  Vaughn  Moody,  in  a  splendid 
but  isolated  attack  of  forgetfulness,  wrote 
The  Great  Divide.  We  may  at  least  hope  that 
he  will  forget  himself  again  in  the  future. 
Percy  Mackaye  always  soars  beyond  his  strength. 
He  is  the  Icarus  of  American  drama.  But  his 
daring,  at  least,  is  an  encouraging  omen.  Edward 
Sheldon,  the  latest  product  of  Harvard's  dramatic 
nursery,  aims  to  reconcile  the  Bowery  drama  with 
the  problem  play.  Eugene  Walter,  groping  like 
wise  toward  a  new  dramatic  form  which  shall  com 
bine  the  antithetical  principles  espoused  by  the 
Third  Avenue  Theater  and  the  Theatre  Antoine, 
also  draws  upon  the  exhaustless  well  of  melo 
drama.  We  may  say  that  melodrama  degenerates 
in  his  hands.  In  his  third  acts  it  is  vice,  not  virtue, 
that  triumphs.  His  art  seems  to  be  melodrama  in 
verted.  Here,  however,  degeneration — applying 


INTELLECTUAL  DRAMA          131 

the  term  with  scientific  discrimination — denotes 
an  upward  step  in  evolution.  From  the  decom 
position  of  melodrama  will  issue,  perhaps,  the 
drama  of  the  future. 

We  have  authors;  we  have  theaters.  Where 
shall  we  find  a  public?  In  Paris,  in  Berlin,  pre 
mieres  are  public  events.  A  new  play  is  hotly  dis 
cussed.  Actors  are  known  to  have  been  egged. 
We  view  the  stage  with  stony  indifference. 
Until  Sothern's  interpretation  of  Hamlet,  or 
Faversham's  conception  of  a  new  play  by  Stephen 
Phillips,  is  to  us  all  a  matter  of  vital  and  personal 
interest,  the  New  Theater  will  be  only  an  arch  of 
promise  in  our  theatrical  sky. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THINGS    LITERARY 

I  AM  a  great  believer  in  antinomies.  Every 
truth,  like  the  bee  its  sting,  carries  within  it  its 
own  negation.  There  is  not  one  truth,  but  many. 
No  one  has  ever  uttered  more  than  a  half  truth. 
Those  who,  like  Whitman,  attempt  to  express  the 
whole  truth  are  necessarily  inconsistent.  Niet 
zsche's  Zarathustra  utters  a  half  truth.  And  the 
Hebrew  prophets  have  uttered  a  half  truth. 
Those  who  desire  the  whole  truth  must  needs 
reconcile  the  irreconcilable.  They  must  harmon 
ize  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  with  the  egotistical 
doctrines  of  Stirner.  Life  is  a  shining  jewel.  We 
can  never  see  it  whole.  We  may  only  hope  to  re 
flect  the  glint  of  some  of  its  facets. 

I  am  aware  that  I  am  dreadfully  inconsistent. 
But  I  am  not  ashamed.  The  Book  of  Life  is  full 
of  inconsistencies.  Why  should  we  attempt  to 
be  consistent  if  the  Author  of  all  things  has  no 
compunction  in  apparently  contradicting  himself? 
Even  if  we  had  glimpses  of  the  ultimate  truth, 
how  could  we  express  the  infinite  in  terms  of  the 
finite?  Besides,  we  could  be  truthful,  even  in  a 

132 


THINGS  LITERARY  133 

limited  sense,  only  with  an  intellectual  double, 
whose  mind  was  a  replica  of  our  own.  For  those 
whose  mentality  is  on  a  slightly  different  plane 
from  ours  we  must  translate  our  mental  vibrations. 
The  symbols  that  convey  one  meaning  to  us  may 
convey  antithetical  notions  to  others.  In  order  to 
make  our  thoughts  recognizable,  we  must  disguise 
them.  We  must  lie,  to  be  truthful. 

I  have  in  the  past  compared  literary  Germany 
to  a  madhouse.  Insanity,  I  insisted,  was  the  bed 
fellow  of  her  genius.  And  I  was  perfectly  right. 
I  have  nothing  to  modify.  I  have  stated  perfectly 
one  half  of  the  truth.  I  shall  now  contradict  my 
self  flatly.  I  shall  express  the  other  half  of  this 
puzzling  antinomy. 

If  I  were  to  describe  the  literary  atmosphere  of 
Germany  in  one  word,  I  should  say  that  it  is  per 
vaded  by  health.  There  is  nothing  of  the  sickly 
spirit  that  stigmatizes  the  literature  of  the  New 
World.  We  have  stunted  the  growth  of  letters. 
We  cram  genius  into  the  bed  of  Procrustes.  Ger 
many  gives  full  scope  to  self-expression.  We  ask 
brambles  of  the  pomegranate  tree.  We  prune 
the  poet's  inspiration.  We  measure  by  the 
same  standard  the  pine  tree  and  the  hedge. 
We  have  men  of  esprit,  but  we  compel 
them  to  hide  their  light  under  the  bushel  of  our 
stupidity. 

Besides,  we  despise  purely  imaginative  values 
— except  in  Wall  Street.  The  late  Richard  Wat- 


134    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

son  Gilder  was  highly  elated  when,  at  a  festival  of 
the  Felibres  in  France,  he  was  introduced  as  "  M. 
le  poete." 

'  You  see,"  he  explained  to  me,  "  I  had  come 
from  a  country  where  it  is  almost  an  insult  to  be 
called  a  poet." 

Our  indifference  to  true  creative  ability  is  so  in 
tense  that  we  have  even  driven  our  greatest  imag 
inative  genius,  barring  Poe,  from  his  proper  field 
of  literary  endeavor  into  the  unfamiliar  realm  of 
Arctic  exploration.  When  Dr.  Cook  came  back 
to  us  as  the  discoverer  of  the  North  Pole, — a  dull 
and  meaningless  feat, — we  hailed  him  as  a  na 
tional  hero.  But  when  we  began  to  suspect  that 
his  tale  was  not  a  recital  of  vulgar  fact,  but  the 
indisputable  evidence  of  high  imaginative  endow 
ment,  we  flouted  him!  We  have  barred  his  bust 
from  the  Hall  of  Fame,  together  with  that  of  the 
author  of  "  Gordon  Pym."  Those  who  believe 
with  Wilde  that  the  aim  of  art  is  lying,  must  place 
Dr.  Frederick  A.  Cook  above  Commander  Robert 
E.  Peary.  Anybody  might  discover  the  pole;  but 
not  everybody  could  create  highly-colored  and 
eloquent  prose,  hypnotizing  two  hemispheres  with 
its  measured  cadence.  Even  from  the  point  of  view 
of  mere  human  justice,  it  seems  unfair  that  we,  a 
nation  of  fakers,  should  thus  disown  the  greatest 
exponent  of  our  national  trait. 

We  are  more  afraid  of  originality  than  of  the 
Devil.  The  "  six  best  sellers "  might  all  have 


THINGS  LITERARY  135 

been  written  by  one  man,  or  rather,  by  one  wo 
man.  Our  books,  like  our  clothes  and  our  morals, 
are  ready-made.  In  German  letters  it  is  person 
ality  that  counts.  Germany  regards  seriously  only 
those  who  have  something  to  say.  She  is  less  con 
cerned  about  the  little  niceties  of  expression.  Our 
books  are  written  with  uniform  excellence  in  irre 
proachable  style.  I  am  sure  that  most  of  our  au 
thors  would  pass  the  college  entrance  examinations 
in  English.  I  am  equally  sure  that  the  most  dis 
tinguished  German  writers  would  be  sadly  de 
ficient  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  manufacturers 
of  lingual  patterns.  Their  style  is  individual,  not 
academic. 

We  are  forced  to  write  down  to  the  mediocre 
level  of  an  imaginary  public.  We  painstakingly 
remove  the  vitals  from  the  body  of  our  writing. 
Editors  and  publishers  apparently  have  an  exceed 
ingly  low  opinion  of  their  patron,  the  public.  I 
have  more  faith  in  the  reader.  His  intelligence,  I 
admit,  is  not  usually  of  a  high  order,  but  he  cannot 
be  as  inane  as  the  fodder  supplied  to  him  by  the 
magazines.  Occasionally  an  original  idea  some 
how  makes  its  way  into  print  in  spite  of  the  editor, 
and  in  spite  of  him  scores  a  success.  At  once  the 
publisher  slyly  degrades  it  into  a  pattern.  Abroad 
authors  are  afraid  of  imitating  even  themselves. 
We  quench  their  genius  in  the  monotony  of  the 
treadmill.  We  value  them  merely  for  certain 
products,  just  as  we  prize  the  stuffed  goose  for  its 


136     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

torpid  liver.  Our  literature  is  as  sick  as  a  torpid 
goose. 

Life,  health,  is  development,  variety,  growth. 
There  is  something  distinctly  diseased  in  the  men 
tal  frame  of  authors  who  year  in,  year  out,  squeeze 
from  their  cerebrums  the  same  thin,  colorless  fluid. 
We  measure  even  the  exact  amount  of  the  drivel 
that  shall  ooze  from  their  minds.  We  rigorously 
regulate  the  bulk  of  a  book.  In  Germany  there  is 
a  delightful  variety  in  bookmaking  and  a  corre 
sponding  variety  in  prices.  An  author  writes  be 
cause  he  has  something  to  say.  When  he  has  said 
it,  he  stops.  If  he  cannot  express  himself  in  one 
volume,  no  publisher  will  dare  to  prescribe  me 
chanical  limits  to  the  flights  of  his  inspiration. 

The  late  Otto  Julius  Bierbaum  was  a  typical 
German  literateur.  Otto  Julius  Bierbaum  was  a 
healthy  literateur.  He  was  healthier  than  the 
editor  of  The  Ladles'  Home  Journal.  He  was 
healthy,  because  he  was  often  morbid.  He  fully 
revealed  himself  in  his  books.  No  American  pub 
lisher  would  have  dared  to  publish  his  rhythmical 
studies  of  passion.  And  the  very  bulk  of  his 
books  would  have  crushed  his  fortunes.  Prinz 
Kukuck,  the  most  important  essay  in  fiction  of 
his  later  years,  like  Gaul,  is  divided  into  three 
parts,  published  in  three  expensive  volumes  of  un 
equal  length.  And  it  is  Gallic  in  flavor,  its  sub-title 
running  thus:  "Life,  Adventures  and  Descent  to 
Hell  of  a  Foluptuary."  The  book  portrays  strong 


THINGS  LITERARY  137 

normal  passions  and  curious  erotic  vagaries. 
There  is  a  suggestion  of  Nero  and  a  suggestion  of 
Borgia. 

The  circle  of  passion  revolving  in  the  pages  be 
fore  us  completes  the  cycle  of  human  perversion, 
from  the  sick  passion  of  mad  Roman  Caesars  to 
mediaeval  incest  and  the  vices  of  Alexander  VI. 
The  novelist  never  moralizes.  He  narrates  inci 
dents  as  they  happen.  But  you  feel  that  his 
ethical  code  conflicts  with  the  tables  of  Moses. 
He  is  not  ashamed  of  portraying  the  purely  sen 
sual.  He  avowedly  loves  the  flesh,  but,  being  a 
modern,  burdened  down  with  the  heritage  of 
Hamlet,  he  cannot  divorce  it  from  mind.  He  is 
not  in  the  least  concerned  about  the  reader's  com 
fort.  He  tarries  for  a  hundred  pages  where  he  is 
interested,  and  disposes  of  a  decade  in  a  sentence, 
where  he  is  not.  But  when  I  lay  a  book  of  his 
aside,  I  feel,  in  the  words  of  Whitman,  that  I 
have  touched  a  man.  He  was  not  the  impersonal 
narrator,  but,  like  Dickens,  confided  in  us  as  in  a 
friend. 

The  cultured  American  keeps  his  best  as  well 
as  his  worst  to  himself.  Even  Crawford,  for 
whom  I  have  always  had  a  tender  regard,  never 
fully  revealed  the  depth  and  height  of  his  being. 
Bierbaum  exposed  both  to  our  gaze.  That  is  why 
his  books  are  of  permanent  value.  Ships  running 
at  half-speed  will  never  traverse  the  ocean  of 
eternity.  In  the  successor  to  Prinz  Kukuck,  Sell- 


i38    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

same  Geschichten,  stories  of  the  weird,  Bierbaum 
has  given  us  mainly  his  worst.  His  mannerisms 
are  become  unbearable.  His  reflections,  tedious. 
He  is  as  garrulous  as  a  parrot.  The  flower  of 
genius  has  run  to  seed.  But  that  is  inevitable, 
natural,  and  therefore  hardly  a  symptom  of 
disease. 

While  Bierbaum's  vision  of  life  is  normal  in 
its  total  effect,  Hans  Heinz  Ewers  evolves  out 
of  his  sadistic  imagination  nightmares  of  cruelty 
and  lust.  He  is  a  Poe  plus  sex,  minus  style. 
Ewers  and  his  curious  stories  of  obsession  and  car 
nage  are  read  as  widely  as  Poe.  We  would  have 
shunned  Poe  if  he  had  strayed  into  the  byways  of 
sex,  as  he  has  strayed  into  the  byways  of  horror. 
And  we  would  probably  jail  the  publisher  of 
Ewers's  fantastic  short  stories.  We  would  cer 
tainly  regard  the  author  as  being  beyond  the  pale. 

Germany  being  less  morbid  is  less  squeamish 
than  we.  She  merely  expects  the  poet  to  ride  his 
Pegasus  skillfully.  And  no  one  is  nai've  enough 
to  confuse  his  literary  performances  with  his  pri 
vate  morals.  I  have  not  met  Ewers,  but  I  have 
seen  his  picture  and  that  of  his  wife,  a  charming 
woman  of  somewhat  more  robust  fiber  than  he. 
Ewers  seems  to  be  a  delicate,  one  might  almost 
say  fragile,  creature.  I  am  sure  that  in  life  he 
would  turn  in  disgust  from  the  dreadful  visions 
that  delectate  his  readers.  Which  reminds  me  of 
that  bourgeois  Maupassant,  Heinz  Tovote. 


THINGS  LITERARY  139 

Tovote's  family  life  is  an  idyl  in  the  German 
Gomorrah.  He  is  an  adorable  little  fellow,  with  a 
leaning  to  embonpoint.  But  his  stories  are  very 
naughty.  Nevertheless,  in  his  own  narrow  field 
he  is  unparalleled.  If  I  had  a  daughter,  I  would 
gladly  entrust  her,  unchaperoned,  to  the  care  of  a 
poet  of  passion.  And  if  I  had  a  son,  I  would  no  less 
gladly  choose  a  passional  poetess  for  his  com 
panion.  Like  the  proverbial  dog  whose  melodious 
voice  constantly  irritates  our  ear  drums,  the  poet 
of  passion  is  comparatively  innocuous.  Notwith 
standing  his  protestations,  he  will  not  bite. 

The  most  ardent  singer  of  the  flesh  in  Germany, 
Marie  Madeleine,  is  the  conventional  wife  of  a 
pensioned  general.  But  upon  her  forehead  gleams 
the  diadem  of  song.  In  her  voluptuous,  rhythmic 
and  wonderfully  passionate  poems  she  approaches 
Swinburne  himself.  She  lacks  the  knowledge  of 
books,  the  erudition  of  Swinburne.  She  surpasses 
him  in  the  knowledge  of  human  passion.  She  has 
sung  of  Antinous,  and  she  has  sung  of  Sappho, 
and  of  the  "  white  implacable  Aphrodite."  Her 
passional  studies  are  cries  from  the  depths  of  her 
potential  selves.  In  reality,  she  is  perfectly  respect 
able  and  perfectly  bourgeoise.  Her  life  is  whole 
some  because  it  is  complete.  She  is  virtuous  in  her 
private  life,  but  a  Faustina  in  song.  Impulses 
which,  if  suppressed,  would  have  poisoned  her  life, 
escape  through  the  safety-valve  of  literary  expres 
sion.  The  antitoxin  of  genius  disinfects  them  for 


140     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

us.     No  poet  living  to-day  has  breathed  into  his 
song  more  voluptuous  music  than  this: 

Ich  sah  dem  Blld  die  gauze  Nacht, 
Und  in  mlr  stohnte  dumpf  das  Tier, 
All  meine  Sehnsucht  schrie  nach  dir 
Die  ganze  Nacht,  die  ganze  Nacht. 
******* 

Du  Idchelst  stolz — "  Ich  hab's  gewusst!  " 
Und  weisst  dock  nicht  lu'ie  ich  mich  sehne 
Zu  graben  meine  Raubtierzahne 
In  deine  nackte  Jiinglingsbrust. 

The  genius  of  Marie  Madeleine  has  found  its 
supreme  embodiment  in  A uf  Kypros,  a  collection 
of  verses  published  when  she  was  a  mere  slip  of  a 
girl.  At  once  she  became  the  fashion.  Imitators 
sprang  up  like  fungi.  But  her  first  sonorous  utter 
ance  was  followed  by  imbecile  and  frivolous  verse, 
and  mediocre  fiction.  In  her  later  books,  notably 
in  a  volume  entitled  In  Seligkeit  und  Siinden,  she 
has  again  redeemed  herself.  Her  very  uneven- 
ness  is  a  sign  of  health.  Like  Bierbaum,  she  sup 
presses  neither  her  best  nor  her  worst,  leaving  the 
verdict  on  the  knees  of  the  gods. 

The  German  author,  as  I  have  said,  is  less  pol 
ished  than  we.  He  rises  to  greater  heights  and 
descends  to  immeasurably  lower  levels.  If  an 
author  has  once  made  a  reputation  for  himself 
among  us  in  any  peculiar  field,  he  is  secure  unto 


THINGS  LITERARY  141 

the  day  of  his  death,  unless  he  insists  upon  ventur 
ing  into  unexplored  regions.  A  new  idea  is  fatal 
to  his  reputation.  Occasionally  an  intrepid  writer 
has  dared  to  be  original,  but  invariably  the  flesh- 
pot  has  proved  too  strong  a  lure  for  him  in  the 
end.  Mark  Twain  has  written  some  of  the  most 
serious  books  of  the  century.  He  is  the  most 
serious  writer  I  know.  But  we  refuse  to  treat  his 
book  on  Joan  of  Arc,  or  his  masterful  study  of 
the  Shakespeare  problem,  with  respectful  consid 
eration.  We  laugh  at  the  clown,  even  if  his 
grimaces  are  convulsions  of  death. 

In  Germany,  however,  critics  have  no  patience 
with  a  man  who  repeats  himself.  The  new  plays 
of  Sudermann  and  of  Hauptmann  are  in  no  way 
inferior  to  the  antecedent  performances  of  their 
authors.  But  Germany  asks  higher  achievements 
in  divers  fields,  and  is  suspicious,  moreover,  of  too 
sure  a  technique.  Ludwig  Fulda,  the  translator  of 
Moliere  and  the  Moliere  of  his  epoch,  has  suf 
fered  all  his  life  because  a  well-meaning  and 
deluded  fairy  has  endowed  him  excessively  with 
verbal  and  metrical  skill. 

Modern  Germans  love  the  big  things  roughly 
hewn  out  of  stone.  Michael  Angelo  and  Rodin, 
not  Phidias,  are  to  them  the  embodiments  of 
genius.  Gerhardt  Hauptmann  has  reached  such  a 
degree  of  proficiency  in  his  art  that  his  admirers 
have  begun  to  suspect  the  genuine  quality  of  his 
gifts.  They  have  turned  away  from  him  and 


142     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

raised  his  brother  Karl  upon  their  shields.  Karl, 
they  say,  is  the  greater  poet,  Gerhardt  the  greater 
craftsman.  Karl  is  surely  a  man  of  genius.  But  I 
shall  never  forget  the  lovely  face  of  Rautendelein, 
sister  to  Peter  Pan.  Karl  has  not  conjured  a  Rau 
tendelein  into  being.  His  novels  are  masterly  de 
lineations  of  the  lives  of  the  lower  classes.  I  have 
no  use  for  the  deservedly  poor, — least  of  all  in 
fiction.  Their  diseases  are  so  uninteresting.  The 
diseases  of  the  cultured,  like  the  pearl,  that  disease 
of  the  oyster,  are  often  of  delicate  texture. 

Both  brothers  regard  their  work  with  a  serious 
ness  that  is  terrifying  in  the  sense  in  which 
Niagara,  or  any  other  great  cosmic  manifestation, 
is  terrifying.  American  writers  consider  their 
profession  a  trade.  We  have  a  sense  of  humor,  at 
least  of  caricature,  but  no  sense  of  the  dignity  of 
our  calling.  If  success  eludes  the  literary  trades 
man,  he  will  readily  change  his  literary  complexion, 
as  a  traveling  salesman  deserts  men's  clothing  for 
ladies'  hose.  Not  the  law  of  his  growth,  but  the 
demand  of  the  market,  diverts  his  talents  into  new 
avenues.  The  law  of  growth  determines  the  meta 
morphoses  of  the  genuine  artist.  The  moment 
European  writers  of  reputation  cease  to  grow,  the 
elect  turn  away  from  them,  even  if  the  rabble  still 
worship  awhile  in  the  forsaken  sanctuary. 

The  European  writer  is  ever  goaded  on  by  the 
dread  of  displeasing  the  critical  Grand  Moguls 
who  pronounce  his  destiny.  A  critic  may  often  be 


THINGS  LITERARY  143 

greater  than  the  author  whom  he  brilliantly  mis 
interprets.  Such  a  critic  is  Alfred  Kerr,  whose 
word  is  fate  in  the  Neue  Rundschau.  He  is  dis 
tinctly  creative:  he  makes  and  he  mars.  Even  the 
greatest  in  literature  owe  their  renown  in  part  to 
their  critics.  Faust  and  Hamlet  are  greater  to 
day  than  they  were  when  their  authors  conceived 
them,  because  the  greatest  critical  minds  of  several 
centuries  have  made  them  the  storehouses  of  their 
intellectual  treasures.  Every  commentary  adds  a 
new  and  connotative  value  to  the  original. 

Critics  are  taken  more  seriously  on  the  conti 
nent  than  with  us.  But  then,  we  may  count  our 
creative  critics  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  James 
Huneker  may  be  said  to  be  the  index  finger,  point 
ing  the  way  to  the  new.  Paul  Elmer  More  is  the 
thumb,  pointing  backward.  William  Marion 
Reedy  is  the  middle  finger.  The  little  finger  is 
Percival  Pollard.  I  cannot  make  up  my  mind  as 
to  who  is  the  fifth;  but  I  suspect  Michael  Mona- 
han.  Germany  and  France  each  have  one  for 
every  finger  and  every  toe.  The  wholesale  fear 
of  the  critics  forces  European  writers  to  draw  upon 
that  mysterious  and  exhaustless  well  of  inspiration 
which  William  James  describes  as  the  "  second 
wind  "  of  the  mind. 

German  literature,  like  French  literature,  is  an 
oligarchy.  German  authors  write  up  to  the  few. 
We  write  down  to  the  many.  The  elect  are  swift 
to  recognize  counterfeit  values.  They  are  swift 


i44     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

to  recognize  even  the  uncut  gem.  Hugo  Bertsch, 
a  German-American  laborer,  crude  and  untaught, 
won  instant  and  sensational  recognition  through 
his  novel,  Die  Geschwister.  We  would  have 
"  turned  down  "  his  unorthographic  copy  with  a 
contemptuous  smile.  Hugo  Bertsch,  like  Shakes 
peare,  writes  better  than  he  spells.  Our  novelists 
spell  better  than  they  write.  German  writers  give 
us  even  their  crudities — they  might  be  gems.  The 
idol  heedlessly  dragged  to  the  junk  shop  may  be 
the  true  God  after  all!  But  the  dead  arm  of 
Solomon  cannot  hold  those  critical  spirits  in  thrall. 
Germany  will  not  quench  her  thirst  with  stagnant 
waters. 

Not  long  ago  I  remarked,  half  in  jest,  to  Karl 
Hauptmann :  "  Who  is  greater,  you  or  your 
brother? "  Whereupon  Karl  replied  with  fine 
dignity:  "Neither  my  brother's  life  work,  nor 
mine,  is  completed.  I  should  look  upon  myself 
as  a  corpse  if  it  were.  It  is  too  early  to  close  the 
books.  We  have  neither  of  us  ceased  to  develop. 
We  are  not  ready  yet  to  be  judged."  Both  men 
have  passed  the  age  of  forty.  Karl  is  almost  fifty. 
Had  they  been  born  among  us,  the  grooves  of 
their  lives  would  have  been  established  forever. 
Their  epitaphs  would  lie  all  written  out  in  the 
pigeon-holes  of  the  press.  And  precious  little 
would  there  be  to  add,  though  they  live  to  the 
Biblical  age.  But  at  this  day  no  man  can  predict 
what  startling  new  developments  may  divert  the 


THINGS  LITERARY  145 

genius   of    these   brothers    into    unsuspected    and 
novel  channels. 

I  might  also  have  spoken  of  my  friend,  Johan 
nes  Schlaf,  the  father  of  German  realism.  Schlaf, 
having  run  the  gamut  from  realism  to  mysticism, 
is  again  groping  his  way  toward  new  ideals.  Arno 
Holz,  his  former  brother  in  arms  and  letters,  has 
likewise  passed  through  many  curious  metamor 
phoses.  At  present  he  amuses  himself  by  writing 
poems  without  rhyme  or  meter,  in  the  shape  of  in 
verted  pyramids,  such  as  this.  (I  borrow  the  ex 
cellent  translation  of  my  friend,  William  Ellery 
Leonard.) 

BUDDHA 

By  night  around  my  temple  grove 

watch  seventy  brazen  cows. 
A  thousand  mottled  stone  lampions  flicker. 

Upon  a  red  throne  of  lac 
I  sit  in  the  Holy  of  Holies. 

Over  me 

thro'  the  beams  of  sandalwood, 
in  the  ceilings  open  square, 
stand  the  stars. 

I  blink. 

Were  I  now  to  rise  up 
my  ivory  shoulders  would  splinter  the  roof; 


146     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

and  the  oval  diamond  upon  my  brow 
would  stave-in  the  moon. 

The  chubby  priests  may  snore  away. 

I  rise  not  up. 

I  sit  with  legs  crossed  under 
and  observe  my  navel. 

It  is  a  blood  red  ruby 
in  a  naked  belly  of  gold. 

Stephan  George,  the  Viennese  pre-Raphaelite, 
has  even  reformed  the  German  language.  In  his 
curious  pastels  he  employs  an  orthography  dis 
tinctly  at  war  with  usage.  The  genius  of  modern 
Germany,  alert  and  nervous,  is  always  ready  to  hail 
new  stars  and  new  gods. 

It  would  be  futile  to  deny  the  presence  of  a 
morbid  strain  in  continental  letters.  Certain  writ 
ers,  like  Ewers  and  the  imitators  of  Marie  Made 
leine,  are  too  strongly  allured  by  the  purely  per 
verse.  But  even  corruption  is  not  always  without 
beauty.  In  the  first  stages  of  cancer  a  woman's 
skin  is  said  to  be  almost  pellucid.  The  Blessed 
Damozels  of  Rossetti  are  distinctly  consumptive. 
Sickness,  Heine  says,  is  perhaps  the  ultimate  cause 
of  creation. 

Krankheit  ist  wol  der  letzte  Grund 
Des  ganzen  Schdpfungsdrangs  gewesen, 
Erschaffend  wurde  ich  gesund, 
Erschafend  konnte  ich  genesen. 


THINGS  LITERARY  147 

Sickness  in  itself  is  merely  nature's  attempt  to 
regain  her  balance.  Much  that  seems  morbid  in 
modern  German  civilization  merely  indicates  na 
ture's  struggle  for  health.  The  poison  is  not  sup 
pressed;  it  breaks  out,  runs  its  course,  and  insures 
the  health  of  the  patient.  The  butterfly  in  its 
ugly  transitional  stage  impresses  the  student  with 
its  promise  of  future  beauty.  And  much  that  we 
regard  as  diseased  may  thus  be  prophetic  of  a 
larger  culture.  Viewed  in  this  light,  even  the 
atrocities  of  Simplicissimus  and  Jugend  are  molli 
fied.  Most  comic  journals  and  many  books 
published  in  Germany  would  be  barred  by  pos 
tal  tyranny  from  the  United  States  mails.  Sim 
plicissimus  and  Jugend,  having  been  warned  re 
peatedly  by  our  postal  authorities,  will  regale 
us  in  the  future  with  editions  resembling  at 
least  in  one  respect  the  boy-choir  of  the 
Vatican. 

I  have  always  entertained  for  letter  carriers  the 
tender  affection  bestowed  in  olden  times  upon 
couriers.  The  average  letter  carrier,  I  am  sure, 
is  a  man  of  strong  moral  principles,  an  impeccable 
father  and  a  peerless  husband.  He  has  passed 
through  the  gate  of  the  Civil  Service  examination. 
He  is  a  useful  citizen.  I  have  no  grudge  against 
him.  But  if  some  Jack-in-office,  or  post-office,  had 
the  preposterous  presumption  to  inquire  into  my 
literary  morals,  or  to  determine  questions  of  ar 
tistic  finesse,  I  would  unpleasantly  remind  him  of 


148     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

the  fate  of  Marsyas;  or,  like  Oberon,  present  him 
with  the  decoration  of  Bottom. 

The  freedom  of  literature,  as  well  as  the  free 
dom  of  speech,  is  more  unrestrained  in  the  mon 
archies  of  Europe  than  in  the  republic  described 
by  an  unconscious  ironist  as  "  the  land  of  the 
free."  The  postal  clerk  abroad  who  would  dare 
to  lay  hands  on  a  work  like  the  Kreutzer  Sonata, 
would  be  drowned  in  a  flood  of  derision.  We  look 
on  with  folded  arms  when  the  machinery  of  the 
federal  government,  set  into  motion  by  an  igno 
rant  clerk,  crushes  our  vaunted  freedom  of  speech. 
And  we  forget  that  the  monster  of  federal  as 
sumption,  like  the  vampire,  grows  in  strength  with 
each  victim. 

Of  course,  not  every  book  published  abroad 
would  be  in  danger  of  literary  assassination  in 
America.  Of  late  the  genius  of  Ellen  Key,  the 
distinguished  Swede;  and  of  Franciska  Mann,  and 
Gabrielle  Reuter  and  Ricarda  Huch,  her  prophets 
in  Berlin,  have  been  diverting  the  tide  of  fashion 
from  sanctuaries  where  amorous  peccadilloes  are 
tantamount  to  devotion  to  new  and  saner  ideals. 
Although  the  outre  and  the  morbid  color  modern 
German  literature,  the  solid  successes  of  the  last  few 
years,  Jorn  Uhl,  Die  Buddenbrucks,  Konigliche 
Hoheit,  and  Gotz  Krafft,  glow  with  health,  not 
putrescence.  They  are  a  splendid  affirmation  of 
the  inherent  soundness  of  the  German  people. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE  SAGE  OF   COPENHAGEN 

COPENHAGEN  with  its  wharves  and  its  ships 
is  a  picturesque  place.  My  knowledge  of  geog 
raphy  is  rudimentary,  but  Denmark,  I  believe,  is 
surrounded  by  water.  Strangely  enough,  the  city 
of  Copenhagen  can  be  reached  directly  by  train 
from  Berlin.  Twice  in  the  journey  a  giant  ferry 
carries  locomotive  and  cars  with  the  passengers 
across  large  stretches  of  water.  Having  once  ar 
rived  in  Copenhagen,  you  don't  know  what  to  do 
with  yourself.  There  are  only  four  things  of  in-' 
terest  in  Denmark:  The  .Glyptothek,  the  Thor- 
waldsen  Museum,  George  Brandes,  and  the  grave 
of  Hamlet.  After  you  have  seen  these,  nothing 
remains.  The  Glyptothek  gladly  throws  open  its 
gates  to  you ;  the  Thorwaldsen  Museum  hospitably 
invites  you.  I  should  not  advise  you  to  visit 
George  Brandes.  But  by  all  means  visit  the  grave 
of  Hamlet.  I  have  denied  myself  this  pleasure. 
Now  throughout  the  years  the  vision  of  that  grave 
will  lure  my  fancy  to  Denmark. 

Professor  Brandes  informs  me  that  Hamlet 
was  never  in  Elsinore;  neither  is  he  there  buried. 

149 


150    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

According  to  legend,  Hamlet  was  a  minor  vassal 
king  in  Jutland;  Zealand,  where  Shakespeare  dis 
located  him,  knew  him  not.  But  when  Shakes 
peare's  countrymen  demanded  to  mingle  their 
tears  with  his  ashes,  an  alert  innkeeper,  Marian- 
lysts,  of  Elsinore,  erected  a  stone-heap  there  some 
twenty  years  ago,  revered  ever  since  by  genera 
tions  of  tourists  as  the  grave  of  Ophelia's  obese 
and  unsatisfactory  lover. 

The  Professor,  I  fear,  is  an  incurable  pedant. 
Those  who  direct  their  steps  to  Elsinore  worship 
the  spirit  of  Hamlet.  His  skeleton  is  to  them  a 
matter  of  utter  indifference.  Every  grave  is 
spurious  but  for  faith.  The  mockery  of  this  tomb 
would  be  no  less  hollow  even  if  Hamlet's  carcass 
had  stained  the  coffinboard  with  the  obscene  juices 
of  putrefaction. 

Poets  are  lords  of  circumstance;  they  are  lords 
also  of  geography,  from  the  terrace  of  Elsinore 
to  the  coast  of  Bohemia.  Too  often,  alas,  the 
reality  fails  to  tally  with  fiction.  The  world, 
therefore,  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  the  imagina 
tive  innkeeper  for  having  given  to  Hamlet's 
ghost  the  local  habitation  prescribed  by  sentiment. 
I  am  sure  that  to  me  at  any  rate  Hamlet's  grave, 
unvisited,  will  be  more  inspiring  than  if  I  had 
actually  seen  it.  I  never  have  the  proper  emotions 
when  I  ought  to  have  them.  I  should  probably 
feel  very  stupid  if  I  were  to  encounter  the  ghost 
of  the  Dane.  I  would  not  know  how  to  take  him. 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     151 

A  man  whose  temperament  is  defined  by  his  faulty 
digestion  must  change  considerably  when  he  him 
self  is  digested. 

In  Copenhagen  I  saw  all  there  is  to  be  seen. 
The  vanity  of  my  host  was  deeply  pricked  because 
I  stayed  only  two  days.  He  scornfully  suggested 
that  I  should  take  half  a  day  longer  to  study  Nor 
way  and  Sweden. 

They  are  very  proud  of  their  Glyptothek  in 
Copenhagen.  I  have  never  cared  for  picture  gal 
leries  and  museums.  Like  anthologies,  they  are 
always  so  dreadfully  disappointing.  Recently 
somebody  edited  a  compilation  of  English  verse 
sifted  from  several  standard  anthologies.  I  read 
the  book  from  cover  to  cover.  There  was  not  a 
single  poem  but  had  been  approved  of  by  seven 
previous  compilers.  And  yet  the  final  impression 
was  unsatisfactory.  English  literature  had  never 
seemed  so  poverty-stricken  to  me. 

If  a  poet  of  minor  rank  had  fathered  all  these 
pieces  as  the  presumptive  author,  the  volume,  I 
am  convinced,  would  hardly  have  created  more 
than  a  ripple.  Poems,  like  pictures,  need  frames. 
There  must  be  a  personality  behind  them.  Only 
two  or  three  poems  clung  to  me  after  I  had  fin 
ished  the  volume.  In  an  anthology  hundreds  of 
instruments  seem  to  play  as  many  tunes,  all  at  the 
same  time,  producing  grotesque  and  incongruous 
cacophonies.  Only  now  and  then  an  insistent 
personal  note  penetrates  the  musical  chaos. 


152     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

I  remember  none  of  the  pictures  and  only  two 
or  three  pieces  of  sculpture  exhibited  in  the  Glyp- 
tothek.  There  was  Sinding,  the  brilliant  young 
Norseman,  to  whom  the  mystery  of  beauty  is  re 
vealed  in  the  naked  body.  Half  Rodinesque,  half 
Greek,  he  clothes  the  flesh  with  new  splendor. 
And  there  was  Limburg's  "  Violin  Player  "  mak 
ing  rapturous  music,  heedless  of  the  woman  beside 
him  who  has  swooned  with  desire.  Come  to  think 
of  it,  my  memory  perhaps  betrays  me.  I  may  have 
seen  the  "  Violin  Player  "  only  on  a  picture  postal 
card.  But  it  is  very  real  to  me.  And  I  think  I 
have  seen  it  in  Denmark. 

In  the  Thorwaldsen  Museum  the  ensculptured 
thoughts  of  the  artist  are  harmoniously  linked  to 
gether.  I  sometimes  envy  the  sculptor  because  his 
ideas  are  so  clearly  visualized.  We  who  dabble 
in  words  are  tortured,  once  in  a  while,  by  the  un 
reality  of  our  medium.  That,  perhaps,  is  the 
reason  why  Arthur  Brisbane  entertains  himself  by 
manufacturing  furniture — at  a  loss.  "  Chairs," 
he  once  said  to  me  in  the  strange  reaction  that 
overtakes  the  tired  brain  worker  at  times,  "  chairs 
are  real.  But  words,  bah !  are  nothings !  " 

The  Thorwaldsen  Museum  is  the  picture  of 
Thorwaldsen's  brain;  but  of  a  brain  vibrant  no 
more  with  emotion.  Every  statue  is  a  living 
monument  to  a  dead  idea.  The  moment  a  child 
is  born  it  is  no  longer  an  organic  part  of  the 
mother.  The  moment  we  express  an  opinion  we 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     153 

lose  it.  I  am  as  indifferent  to  my  poems,  once 
they  have  sprung  into  life,  as  the  cockatoo  is  to 
its  little  ones  who  have  escaped  from  the  egg. 
This  may  be  a  horrible  ornithological  blunder.  I 
am  not  up  in  bird-lore.  But  I  am  sure  there  is 
some  kind  of  fowl  that  treats  its  progeny  rather 
badly.  Thorwaldsen  would  probably  feel  like 
walking  in  a  graveyard,  had  he  lived  to  see  the 
edifice  raised  in  his  honor.  Every  ornament 
would  have  marked  some  dead  emotion. 

Thorwaldsen's  statues  and  sculptures  lack  in 
nothing  save  strength.  To  me  their  charm  is  con 
ventional.  I  wonder  whether  he  himself  was  never 
bored  with  his  sleepy  lions  and  the  meaningless 
grace  of  his  Cupids?  Who  knows,  perhaps  his 
brain,  too,  had  a  chamber  of  horrors  to  which  he 
alone  held  the  key.  And  while  his  soul  was  fright 
ened  by  monstrous  visions,  his  hands  craftily 
fashioned  images  pleasing  and  bland. 

We  who  have  succumbed  to  the  spell  of  Rodin 
are  lost  forever  to  the  art  of  the  Danish  master. 
We  have  thrilled  with  the  lyric  rapture  of  the 
Frenchman's  "  Kiss,"  and  with  bated  breath  be 
held  the  "  Hand  of  God."  Rodin  is  the  incarna 
tion  of  mental  rebellion  and  Titanic  strength. 
Michael  Angelo  and  Lucifer  are  his  spiritual 
progenitors.  Thorwaldsen's  body  was  the  tem 
poral  mansion  of  some  smiling  Greek  with  ringlets 
carefully  trimmed,  enamored  of  surface  beauties, 
neither  profound  nor  subtle. 


i54    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Again  disappointed,  I  wended  my  way  to  the 
house  of  Professor  Brandes. 

They  had  told  me  strange  stories  of  the  Pro 
fessor  in  Copenhagen,  of  his  many  peculiarities 
and  how  conceited  he  was!  They  said  that  his 
memoirs,  upon  the  writing  of  which  he  was  now 
engaged,  were  chiefly  the  accounts  of  dinners 
tendered  to  him  in  his  long  career,  and  that  he 
had  carefully  preserved  all  the  menus. 

I  shall  write  freely  of  Brandes  as  one  writes  of 
the  dead.  He  is  already  an  institution.  Here 
was  a  thinker  and  student  famed  throughout  the 
civilized  world,  but  his  immediate  neighbors  re 
membered  only  his  foibles !  They  were  proud  of 
him  as  of  the  Glyptothek,  only  a  little  less.  He 
was  a  "  sight  "  to  be  pointed  out  to  strangers.  Of 
the  immense  mental  stature  of  the  man  who  has 
left  his  impress  on  Europe,  they  had  hardly  an 
inkling.  I  was  also  told  that  Brandes  receives  a 
small  government  pension,  reckoned  large  in  those 
parts,  of  some  few  hundred  dollars.  And  how 
years  ago  he  had  deserted  Denmark  in  anger  be 
cause  a  professorship  he  coveted  had  been  with 
held  from  him  because  of  his  racial  affinity  with 
Moses. 

This  view  apparently  is  erroneous.  "  Who," 
he  writes  to  me,  "  told  you  that  I  could  not  get  in 
office  because  I  was  a  Jew?  That  is  ridiculous; 
the  Jews  have  ten  thousand  offices  in  Denmark. 
I  have  been  these  forty  years  the  only  Dane  who 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     155 

was  a  Greek,  not  a  Hebrew.  Our  nation  was  be 
fogged  by  Jewish  Christian  orthodoxy,  and  I  was 
compelled  to  leave  the  country  because  I  was  a 
freethinker." 

My  Danish  friends  assured  me  that  Brandes  was 
a  crank,  inaccessible  to  strangers,  and  asked  me 
whether  I  had  an  introduction  to  him.  I  explained 
that  I  knew  two  of  his  intimate  friends  who 
would  surely  have  given  me  introductions,  had  I 
known  beforehand  that  I  would  visit  Brandes  on 
my  trip  abroad. 

These  things  I  munched  in  my  mind  as  I 
climbed  the  stairs  to  the  philosopher's  simple 
abode.  A  copy  of  Nineveh  rested  securely  in  a 
side  pocket  of  my  coat.  A  seductive  smile  curled 
my  lips. 

Without  hesitation  I  pulled  the  bell. 

A  maid  half  opened  the  door,  and  upon  my 
question  whether  the  Herr  Professor  was  at  home, 
she  mumbled  something  in  Danish  which  I  could 
not  understand,  and  shut  the  door  in  my  face. 

I  waited  a  little  while,  and  again  rang  the  bell. 
Again  the  maid  appeared  and  listened  to  me  with 
impatience  as  I  informed  her  in  German  that  I 
would  plant  myself  in  front  of  the  door  until  she 
had  taken  my  card  to  the  Herr  Professor.  She 
snatched  the  card  from  me  with  an  air  of  disgust, 
and  retreated  behind  the  door.  One,  two,  three, 
four,  five  minutes  passed,  but  no  response  was 
vouchsafed  to  my  offering. 


156    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Then,  with  grim  determination,  I  rang  the  bell 
for  the  third  time.  There  was  a  sound  of  shuffling 
steps.  The  door  swung  open.  I  caught  a  vision 
of  a  magnificent  head,  white  and  immense.  Like 
an  irate  Jove,  George  Brandes  glowered  upon  me. 

"Good  heavens!"  he  scowled,  "what  do  you 
want?  I  am  working." 

"  I  want  to  see  you,  Herr  Professor." 

"  Everybody  wants  to  see  me.  I  have  no  time 
for  tourists.  I'm  not  on  exhibition.  Good-bye !  " 

Already  the  vision  receded.  One  moment  more, 
and  the  door  would  have  closed  behind  him.  I 
played  my  trump  card. 

"  Hold !  "  I  cried,  with  conscious  dignity.  "  I 
am  George  Sylvester  Viereck." 

"  Yes?  "  he  replied,  with  a  vacant  stare. 

I  repeated  my  name  with  slow  emphasis.  I  was 
not  impatient  with  the  old  man.  There  was  no 
shade  of  annoyance  in  my  voice.  But  no  gleam  of 
intelligence  leaped  from  the  eyes  of  the  sage. 

"  I  told  you  I  was  busy,"  he  angrily  reiterated. 
"  If  I  were  to  see  everybody,  I  should  have  to 
abandon  my  work." 

"  But  I'm  not  everybody,"  I  answered.  "  I 
have  come  all  the  way  from  America  to  meet  you. 
I  can't  leave  Denmark  without  talking  to  you. 
That  would  be  Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out." 

He  was  moved. 

"  Come  in,"  he  said. 

Thus  I  entered  the  Holy  of  Holies. 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     157 

His  studio,  like  Faust's,  was  lined  with  books. 
There  were  books  everywhere.  Nothing  else. 
Books,  and  the  dome  of  his  furrowed  head  seemed 
to  fill  the  room. 

"  I  do  not  come  to  you  without  introductions," 
I  said.  "  I  bring  you  greetings  from  your  old 
friend,"  and  I  mentioned  the  name  of  a  well- 
known  German  writer.  "  He  intended  to  write 
me  a  note  for  you,  but  I  did  not  get  it  in  time." 

"  Too  bad,"  Brandes  rejoined,  "  I've  never 
heard  of  the  man." 

Nothing  dismayed,  I  added  sweetly:  "And,  of 
course,  our  mutual  friend  James  Huneker  has  en 
trusted  me  with  his  compliments." 

"  Don't  know  him,"  the  Sage  of  Copenhagen 
snapped  back. 

"  What !  "  I  exclaimed,  "  you  don't  know  the 
greatest  American  critic,  the  only  man  in  America 
who  understands  you?  " 

Brandes  reflected. 

"  Of  course,"  he  said,  "  I  know  his  books.  He 
is  strangely  brilliant  for  an  American." 

"  He's  half  Irish,  half  Hungarian,"  I  inter 
jected. 

"  But  I  have  never  met  him  in  person." 

'*  Well,"  I  said,  still  undaunted,  "  I  am  a  con 
siderable  personage  myself." 

He  looked  at  me  with  amused  incredulity. 

"  I  am  the  author  of  several  books.  My  poems 
mark  a  new  epoch  in  American  literature.  I  have 


i5 8     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

given  a  new  impulse  to  the  poetry  of  my  age.  Be 
sides,  for  my  recreation,  I  am  editing  two  maga 
zines." 

"  You're  rather  precocious,"  the  sage  retorted. 

Then,  as  if  groping  in  some  far  convolution  of 
his  cerebrum  for  a  reminiscence  half  erased  from 
the  scroll,  he  asked  me :  "  Are  you  related  to  Louis 
Viereck,  the  former  Socialist  leader?  " 

"  He  is  my  father,"  I  said. 

"  Strange !  "  he  exclaimed.  "  Do  you  know 
that  almost  twenty-seven  years  ago  Louis  Viereck 
sought  refuge  in  my  house  from  police  persecu 
tion?" 

"How  romantic!"  I  said,  inwardly  pleased. 
"  What  was  the  matter?  " 

'  There  was  a  Socialist  Congress  in  Copen 
hagen.  The  so-called  '  Exception-laws '  against 
the  Socialists  had  just  been  framed  by  Bismarck, 
and  secret  police  spies  dogged  the  steps  of  every 
participant  in  the  Congress.  Our  own  police  were 
in  league  with  the  Germans,  and  hardly  had  your 
father  been  seated  when  a  policeman  inquired  for 
him.  I  received  him  courteously,  and  explained 
to  him  that  I  had  never  seen  Mr.  Viereck." 

The  ice  being  thus  broken,  we  launched  upon 
conversation. 

"You  were  not  always  so  inaccessible,  then?" 
I  queried.  "  You  live  strangely  secluded  for  one 
so  famous." 

"  Yes,"  he  replied,  without  vanity,  and,  let  it 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     159 

be  added,  without  smiling,  "  I  am  famous.  But 
that  is  a  meaningless  phrase  in  view  of  the  de 
creasing  sale  of  my  books.  In  some  cases  the 
sales  have  dwindled  down  to  thirty  or  forty 
copies." 

"  Impossible !  "  I  cried,  "  your  publishers  must 
be  guilty  of — miscalculations." 

"No;  some  have  been  excellent  friends  to  me; 
nevertheless,  only  two  copies  of  the  German  edition 
of  my  Memoirs  were  actually  sold.  They  haven't 
even  issued  the  second  volume.  But  I  do  not  ask 
them.  I  am  too  proud." 

"  How  could  you  have  made  your  reputation, 
if  the  sales  of  your  books  are  so  circumscribed?" 

"  I  am  sure  I  don't  know.  Some  time  ago  I 
was  lionized  in  France.  I  was  dragged  from 
banquet  to  banquet.  Countless  tributes  were  paid 
to  my  genius.  And  yet,  I  knew  that  none  of  the 
people  who  said  sweet  things  to  me  had  read  my 
books.  Only  one  of  my  books  had  been  issued  in 
French  at  that  time. 

"  But  of  course  some  of  my  books  have  been 
more  fortunate  than  others.  The  complete  edi 
tion  of  my  Danish  writings  was  subscribed  for 
by  no  less  than  six  thousand  people  between  1899 
and  1902.  That  is  a  great  number  for  a  country 
with  a  population  of  only  two  and  one-half  million 
people;  and  naturally  there  were  many  editions  of 
single  books  previously  and  afterward. 

"  Aside  from  this  success,  the  sales  of  my  Dan- 


160     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

ish  books  have,  however,  averaged  only  seven  hun 
dred  copies — and  after  several  successes  have 
brought  me  little  money.  My  Lord  Beaconsfield 
was  published  by  a  prominent  American  house, 
and  no  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  copies  were 
sold,  but  I  never  received  a  cent  in  royalties. 
There  have  been  three  editions  of  my  complete 
works  in  Russian,  but  I  never  saw  a  kopeka.  All 
my  books  have  been  translated  into  Polish,  but  I 
have  never  received  a  heller.  My  Main  Ten 
dencies,  six  volumes,  published  in  Germany  in  nine 
large  editions,  did  not  net  me  a  pfennig." 

"But  what  of  the  magazines?  I  have  heard 
it  said  that  they  pay  you  fabulous  prices." 

A  sad  smile  flickered  across  the  Olympian 
visage. 

"  When  the  twentieth  century  was  about  to  be 
ushered  in,  a  prosperous  German  newspaper  wrote 
to  me  that  they  had  planned  to  publish  a  full  page 
review  of  the  nineteenth  century  by  a  poet,  a 
philosopher,  and  a  scholar;  and  that  I  was  their 
man  because  I  combined  in  my  person  the  qualities 
of  the  three. 

"  I  don't  care  to  write  for  newspapers.  It  de 
tracts  from  my  vitality  and  distracts  me  from  my 
real  pursuits.  But  as  the  chance  for  such  an 
article  occurs  only  once  in  an  hundred  years,  and  as 
I  didn't  expect  to  live  through  another  century, 
I  agreed  to  undertake  the  task  for  a  remuneration 
of  five  hundred  crowns  [one  hundred  and  twenty- 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     161 

five  dollars].  They  replied  regretting  that  they 
had  written  to  me,  and  that  in  view  of  my  un 
reasonable  demands  they  would  be  compelled  to 
enlist  the  services  of  less  expensive  pens." 

"  But  surely  American  magazines  pay  you 
well?" 

'  They  write  to  me  occasionally  for  contribu 
tions  and  ask  me  to  name  my  own  price.  I  don't 
care  to  do  that  sort  of  thing  for  less  than  five  hun 
dred  crowns.  And  they  invariably  pay  me  less 
than  one-half  of  the  price  I  demand." 

"  That  is  almost  incredible." 

"  I  am  old.  The  public  is  used  to  me  now. 
They  want  new  people.  Younger  writers.  I  do 
not  blame  them." 

I  wonder  if  Homer  or  Goethe  would  have  ob 
served  with  such  colossal  indifference  the  rising  of 
new  suns  on  the  literary  horizon?  And  if  the 
yellow  press  would  have  put  them  on  half 
pay? 

'  Why,"  Brandes  continued,  and  his  eyes  swept 
across  an  immense  row  of  books  reaching  from  one 
end  of  the  room  to  the  other,  "  all  my  books  pub 
lished  in  the  English  language  earn  for  me  less 
than  fifty  dollars  per  annum." 

Fifty  dollars !  Was  such  the  interest  paid  by 
us  on  the  greatest  outlay  of  intellectual  capital  the 
world  has  known  since  the  days  of  Voltaire! 

"  But,"  I  questioned,  "  how  about  the  series  of 
contemporary  men  of  letters  published  under  your 


1 62     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

editorship  in  the  United  States,  in  Germany,  and 
in  England?  " 

"  I  have  resigned  the  editorship.  Subsequently, 
the  publisher  offered  me  one  hundred  marks  [twen 
ty-five  dollars]  for  the  use  of  my  name. 

"  And  then,"  Brandes  added,  pointing  contemp 
tuously  to  a  booklet  in  English,  "  this  is  merely 
one  chapter  from  one  of  my  books.  I  suspect  it 
is  too  expensive  to  reprint  them  entirely  in  the 
English  language.  I  write  only  in  Danish.  As 
a  young  man,  I  used  to  write  German  and  English, 
but  I  can't  bother  to  rewrite  my  books  several 
times.  I  must  devote  myself  to  my  studies." 

There  was  something  inspiring  as  well  as  pa 
thetic  in  the  figure  of  this  world-renowned  writer 
who  faithfully  works  night  and  day  to  embody 
his  visions  for  the  hundred-odd  people  who  form 
his  literary  constituency.  Swinburne  said  with  de 
lightful  irony  that  he  wrote  for  antiquity.  Brandes 
could  never  have  said  this.  Nature,  in  his 
anatomy,  omitted  the  funny-bone.  The  giants  of 
literature  are  rarely  endowed  with  a  sense  of 
humor. 

Brandes  is  tremendously  serious,  yet  without  il 
lusions.  '  There  are  only  a  few  immortals,"  he 
said.  "  In  all  the  revolving  years  the  world  has 
produced  scarcely  twelve;  and  I  shall  not  be 
among  them.  And  yet,  work  alone  is  the  cup 
that  stays  and  comforts  us.  In  work  we  dimly 
apprehend  the  grim  exultation  of  God  when  He 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     163 

moved  on  the  face  of  the  waters,  and  at  His  breath, 
Life  was." 

"  Material  values,"  Brandes  exclaimed,  "  can 
never  compensate  us.  There  are  no  values  but  in 
tellectual  values.  Hegel,  the  great  German  phi 
losopher,  placed  the  mind  above  all  things.  He 
synthesized  his  philosophy  in  the  phrase  that  a 
wretched  bon  mot  is  greater  than  the  sun.  As 
for  me,  I  prefer  the  sun  to  a  wretched  bon  mot. 
But  surely  the  mind  of  a  Titan  like  Goethe  out 
balances  almost  a  world." 

"  Do  you  then  believe  in  the  Superman?  " 

"  I  never  take  into  my  mouth  words  which 
others  have  spit  out.  I  despise  such  outworn  pat 
terns  of  speech  more  than  I  can  express.  But  I 
believe  in  the  ego.  I  believe  in  great  men.  I 
believe  in  great  individualities.  I  don't  believe 
in  the  rabble." 

"  But,"  I  said,  "  is  not  a  great  man  merely  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  rabble,  the  conscious  exponent 
of  all  that  labors  blindly  in  the  sub-consciousness 
of  his  people?  " 

"  On  the  contrary,"  he  replied,  "  all  great  men 
have  been  at  odds  with  their  age.  A  great  man's 
life  is  one  continuous  battle  with  mediocrity,  which 
he  outshines  and  which  strives  to  obscure  him. 
When  Shakespeare  left  London,  not  a  single  ban 
quet  was  given  in  his  honor.  When  he  buried 
himself  in  Stratford,  mediocrity  triumphed.  But 
now  the  laugh  is  on  them.  A  great  man  expresses 


1 64     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

merely  his  own  individuality,  although  it  has  been 
said  of  Voltaire  that  he  was  not  a  man  but  an 
epoch." 

"  But  do  you  not  believe  in  some  kind  of  prog 
ress?  We  who  stand  on  the  shoulders  of  Shake 
speare  should  be  able  to  sing  more  divinely  than 
he." 

"  There  is  little  progress  in  the  world.  Much 
that  we  call  progress  is  merely  the  progressive 
idiocy  of  the  world.  Technical  progress  and  scien 
tific  progress  have,  I  admit,  wrought  more  changes 
in  my  own  lifetime  than  in  all  the  years  that  have 
revolved  from  the  days  of  Julius  Caesar  to  my 
own  birth.  But  in  art  it  is  different.  There  we 
discover  no  trace  of  evolution,  but  only  changing 
cycles  of  blossom  and  decay.  We  have  created 
nothing  greater  than  the  ninth  book  of  the  Iliad, 
or  the  Sistine  paintings  of  Michael  Angelo." 

We  exchanged  courtesies,  books.  We  spoke  of 
many  things;  of  Anatole  France,  of  Maeterlinck, 
and  of  Denmark.  The  rest  of  the  interview  is 
blurred  from  my  memory.  But  I  shall  never  for 
get  the  Jovian  head,  white  and  immense,  of  George 
Brandes. 

There  is  something  wonderful  in  this  man.  His 
readers  shrink  to  a  handful  from  an  hundred  thou 
sand;  he  still  goes  on  in  the  unruffled  tenor  of  his 
intellectual  pathway.  A  pessimist,  he  has  no 
hopes  nor  illusions.  There  is  only  the  inspi 
ration,  perhaps  the  madness,  of  work.  Like 


THE  SAGE  OF  COPENHAGEN     165 

Socrates,   he   follows  blindly  the   dictates  of  his 
daimon. 

George  Brandes  embodies  a  force  that  is  alien 
to  us.  We  would  reckon  a  man  who  gave  his 
heart's  blood  to  an  unheeding  world  little  more 
than  a  fool.  But  it  is  only  the  fool  divinely  blind 
to  his  own  interest  who  shall  save  the  world. 
Standing  reverently  in  the  studio  of  Brandes,  I 
realized  that  literature,  like  religion,  has  its  ascet 
ics,  its  saints  and  its  martyrs.  George  Brandes  in 
his  library  reminded  me  of  some  monk  in  a  lone 
some  cloister  decorating  ancient  parchments  with 
curious  designs  for  the  glory  of  God.  Even  thus, 
patiently  through  the  years,  the  sage  of  Copen 
hagen  illumines  the  Book  of  Life. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS 

GERMANY,  to  borrow  the  phrase  of  a  teetotaler, 
is  the  classic  land  of  moderate  drinking.  Out  of 
Germany  came  the  temperance  drink,  beer.  Bac 
chus  Dionysios  has  found  many  singers.  Gam- 
brinus  is  unsung,  if  not  unhonored,  of  poets.  Yet 
is  not  the  hop  as  fragrant  as  the  grape?  I  am 
convinced  that  many  poets  who  celebrate  the  vine 
have  been  inspired  by  beer.  But  beer  doesn't 
rhyme  well.  We  deem  it  a  word  without  literary 
traditions.  Still,  the  history  of  beer  is  ancient 
and  honorable,  and  its  literature  reaches  back  to 
the  dusk  of  the  Pagan  gods.  Julian,  the  Apostate, 
was  the  first  contributor  to  the  literature  of  beer. 
He  wrote  a  satirical  poem  against  it.  He  also 
wrote  satirical  poems  against  the  Christians.  But 
the  pale  Galilean  has  conquered.  And,  strange 
as  it  may  seem,  beer  has  been  a  steady  companion 
of  Christian  expansion. 

The  watchword  "  Bibles  and  Beer  "  is  applicable 
in  a  sense  unsuspected  by  those  who  reproachfully 
coined  it.  When  the  Roman  world  power,  the 
bulwark  of  Paganism,  was  demolished,  the  beer  of 

166 


GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS      167 

the  Teutons  supplanted  the  Pagan  wine.  At  first 
the  odor  of  heathen  festivals  attached  to  the  brew 
of  Gambrinus.  But  the  wary  Church  adopted  it 
along  with  the  holidays  of  the  heathens,  and  it 
was  brewed  in  the  monasteries.  And  in  the  drink 
ing  songs  of  the  Germans,  pseans  of  Christ  were 
substituted  for  the  pagans  of  Wotan.  The  Sal 
vation  Army  and  the  Protestant  churches  seem  to 
adhere  to  the  same  ecclesiastical  policy;  they  both 
bawl  devotional  hymns  to  the  rousing  tunes  of  the 
convivial  songs  of  the  German  student. 

The  good  monks  of  the  Middle  Ages  served 
Bacchus  and  Gambrinus  with  equal  zeal.  Chron 
icles  tell  of  a  hop  garden  near  the  monastery  of 
Freising,  in  768.  The  Swedish  bishop  and  cele 
brated  chronicler,  Olaf  Magnus,  remarked  in 
1502  that  the  wine  in  the  South  and  the  beer  in 
the  North  were  steadily  improving.  The  papal 
legate,  Raimundus  Lucullus,  justified  his  cognomen 
by  a  rapturous  tribute  to  the  beer  brewed  in  Ham 
burg.  Martin  Luther  was  a  jolly  good  fellow. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  he  sanctioned  beer. 

Of  course,  the  beer  we  drink  to-day  is  superior 
to  the  beer  of  the  ancient  Germans.  If  Julian 
had  drunk  Pilsener,  his  poetic  philippic  against 
beer  would  have  remained  forever  unwritten.  He 
suffered  his  life  long  from  indigestion.  His  tem 
per  in  consequence  was  splenetic.  He  lost  his 
empire  because  his  temper  ran  away  with  him. 
Beer  would  have  saved  both  his  empire  and  his 


1 68     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

temper.  If  Hamlet  had  been  acquainted  with 
Wiirzburger,  pessimism  would  not  have  en 
thralled  him.  His  family  skeleton  would  not 
have  rattled  through  five  weary  acts  of  Shake 
speare.  We  might  have  had  a  comedy  of  Hamlet. 

Beer  is  the  lubricant  in  the  wheels  of  history. 
Its  salutary  effect  on  the  digestion  has  been  estab 
lished  by  the  Imperial  German  Board  of  Health. 
And  long  before  the  German  Empire  had  been 
founded,  a  shrewd  New  Testament  character  ad 
vised  a  young  Apostle  to  indulge  in  mild  alcoholic 
beverages  for  his  weak  stomach's  sake  and  his 
often  infirmities.  Alcohol  exercises  a  recognized 
function  in  the  religious  ceremonies  of  all  civilized 
nations.  The  Mohammedans,  who  substitute 
constant  sexual  stimulation  for  temporary  alcoholic 
excitement,  have  lagged  behind  in  the  race  of  the 
world's  evolution.  If  teetotalism  ever  vanquishes 
temperance  in  the  United  States,  we  shall  present 
a  spectacle  more  saddening  than  Turkey. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  why  so 
many  parsons  seem  to  be  anxious  to  controvert  the 
first  miracle  of  the  Lord.  If  Christ  had  been  a 
teetotaler,  he  would  not  have  changed  the  water 
into  wine  even  at  his  mother's  request.  He  would 
have  turned  the  wine  into  sarsaparilla.  I  am  not 
a  Christian  minister,  but  I  would  not  dare  dilute 
with  ineffectual  words  the  miraculous  wine  of 
Cana. 

An  American  teetotaler  has  recently  drawn  an 


GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS      169 

interesting  comparison  between  the  American  and 
the  continental  method  of  receiving  guests. 
We,  he  fondly  points  out,  salute  our  visitors  by 
urging  upon  them  the  necessity  of  lavatory  pro 
cedures.  "  Do  you  want  to  wash  your  hands?  " 
the  American  host  solicitously  inquires.  The  con 
tinental  host,  however,  welcomes  his  guest  with  an 
honest  libation.  The  point  is  well  taken,  and  il 
lustrates  the  superior  manners  of  the  civilized 
European.  Why  should  he  insult  his  guests  by 
impugning  their  cleanliness?  Let  me  inform  the 
writer,  in  case  he  should  be  again  tempted  to  travel 
abroad,  that  the  continental  host  expects  his  guests 
to  wash  their  hands  before  they  come  to  his  house. 
May  he  profit  by  this  information ! 

What  should  we  offer  a  guest  but  the  aromatic 
blood  of  the  hop,  or  the  sparkling  gold  of  the 
grape?  If  we  were  Oriental  despots,  we  might 
add  to  these  a  beautiful  slave  girl.  The  laws  of 
the  land  and  economic  considerations  unfortunately 
compel  us  to  dispense  with  these  affecting  tokens 
of  appreciation  and  friendship.  Shall  they  also 
bar  wine?  Libations  have  been  poured  wherever 
friends  have  met  since  the  days  of  Homer.  The 
wisdom  of  the  East,  and  the  traditions  of  our 
Teutonic  sires,  both  emphasize  the  philosophy  of 
drink.  The  soul,  as  Leibnitz  has  said,  is  a  house 
without  windows.  The  lock  of  the  door  is  in- 
crusted  with  Care.  Self-consciousness,  with  seven 
iron  bands,  barricades  the  entrance.  Alcohol  is 


i  yo    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

the  magic  key  that  unlocks  the  door.  Compara 
tive  strangers  are  transfigured  and  gladdened  by 
the  magic  of  friendship  when  it  has  spoken  its 
Sesame.  Irksome  barriers,  which  normally  only 
years  of  close  communion  could  have  shattered, 
are  obliterated  for  the  time  being.  The  soul, 
escaping  from  its  cage  for  a  little  while,  sings  and 
soars  like  a  bird. 

People  on  the  continent,  especially  the  Germans, 
take  their  drinks  with  refinement.  They  drink 
as  they  live — aesthetically.  We  neither  live  nor 
drink  in  beauty.  We  spend  large  amounts  of 
money  on  drinking.  But  the  subtleties  of  the 
Bacchic  ceremonial  escape  us.  We  are  novices 
in  the  service  of  the  good  god  Gambrinus.  That 
is  the  reason  why  our  waiters  despise  us.  You 
must  have  noticed  the  supercilious  servility  and 
condescending  smile  of  the  French  or  the  German 
waiter  when  you  give  him  your  order.  He  looks 
down  upon  us  as  Barbarians. 

The  German  thrives  on  the  light  glass  of  beer 
or  wine  with  his  meals;  whiskey  he  abhors.  We 
are  killed  off  daily  and  hourly  in  the  dairy  restau 
rants.  We  shall  never  have  an  American  art 
while  we  subsist  largely  on  icewater.  The  pluto 
cratic  few  are  well  provided  in  clubs  and  expensive 
eating-places.  The  average  American  depends  for 
his  lunch  on  the  dairy.  Saloons  are  often  un 
comfortable  and  obnoxious.  What  we  need  is 
Childs'  with  the  added  inspiration  of  spirits.  In 


GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS      171 

Germany,  you  find  such  places  everywhere.  The 
most  famous  chain  of  restaurants  is  Aschinger's, 
a  sort  of  inspired  Quids'. 

Dr.  Magnus  Hirschfeld,  in  his  brochure  en 
titled  The  Gullet  of  Berlin,  avers  that  every  sec 
ond  house  in  the  German  metropolis  is  a  place 
where  alcohol  in  some  form  is  vended.  Yet 
drunkenness  is  almost  unknown.  That  is  because 
people  refrain,  as  a  rule,  from  strong  liquor.  I 
am  not  one  of  those  who  would  bar  even  liquor. 
There  are  times  when  it  is  both  safe  and  delightful 
to  take  a  cordial.  But — a  cordial  isn't  a  drink. 
It  is  a  stimulant,  and,  taken  in  excess,  a 
poison.  Until  we  can  imprint  indelibly  upon 
our  brains  the  difference  between  a  drink  and  a 
stimulant,  let  us  keep  our  hands  from  the 
whiskey  flagon.  Who,  by  the  way,  is  the  god 
of  Cognac? 

We  have  the  deplorable  tendency  to  vulgarize 
things.  We  cheapen  literature  in  magazines. 
The  Sunday  Supplement  is  the  degradation  of  art. 
We  degrade  marriage  and  love  in  the  court-room. 
And  we  make  drinking  abominable  through  vulgar 
and  injudicious  excesses.  We  are  like  the  early 
Christians  who  dethroned  the  gods  of  the  Pagans 
and  made  them  monstrous  and  wicked.  Jupiter 
was  anathematized  as  a  devil.  Mercury  was 
looked  upon  as  a  thief.  Phoebus  Apollo  became 
an  evil  sorcerer,  Cupid  an  imp  of  hell,  and  the 
mother  of  Cupid— 


172    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

The  obscure  Venus  of  the  hollow  hill, 

The  thing  transformed  that  was  the  Cytherean, 

With  lips  that  lost  their  Grecian  laugh  divine.  .  .  . 

But  the  woe  of  the  ancient  gods  was  not  ended. 
It  remained  to  the  New  World  to  contort  the  love 
liness  of  Bacchus  and  the  benign  smile  of  Gam- 
brinus  into  the  hideous  grimace  of  the  Demon 
Rum. 

Germany,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  mother  of  mod 
eration.  We  can  learn  from  her,  but  we  can  learn 
more  from  Denmark.  The  Germans  are  naturally 
moderate.  The  Danes  incline  to  drunkenness. 
And  we,  I  am  afraid,  are  more  like  Danes  than 
Germans.  There  is  a  certain  instability  in  our 
national  temperament  that  shall  no  doubt  disap 
pear  when  the  fusion  of  races  has  produced  the 
American  type. 

The  Danish  brewing  industry  is  of  recent 
growth.  In  1840,  only  one  hundred  and  four 
teen  persons,  all  in  all,  were  engaged  in  the  busi 
ness,  including  the  workmen.  In  those  days  De 
mon  Rum  held  undisputed  sway  over  Denmark. 
The  Danes  wer°  drowned  in  liquor.  Their 
bodies,  soaked  with  rum,  withstood  the  teeth  of 
corruption  in  the  grave.  It  was  dangerous  to 
strike  a  match  in  the  propinquity  of  one  of  Ham 
let's  compatriots.  Perhaps  the  plight  of  the  Dan 
ish  people  and  of  their  neighbors,  the  Swedes,  has 
been  responsible  for  the  safety  match.  I  am, 


GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS      173 

however,  not  prepared  to  make  an  affidavit  on 
this. 

At  any  rate,  about  1870,  the  temperance  wave 
struck  the  little  kingdom.  The  leaders  of  the 
movement  discerned  with  rare  sagacity  that  intem 
perance  could  be  fought  only  with  a  light  alcoholic 
beverage.  They  talked  to  the  brewers,  and  the 
brewers  talked  to  each  other.  After  some  scratch 
ing  of  heads,  they  finally  produced  a  light  beer 
pleasant  to  the  taste,  containing  a  small  percentage 
of  alcohol.  Later  on  the  State  took  a  hand  in 
the  matter  by  levying  a  heavy  tax  on  all  beers 
containing  more  than  2  1-4  per  cent,  of  alcohol 
by  weight.  Beer  with  only  21-4  per  cent,  of 
alcohol  was  not  taxed  at  all.  The  consequence 
was  that  all  breweries  opened  up  plants  for  the 
production  of  temperance  beer. 

One-half  of  all  the  beer  produced  in  Denmark 
is  temperance  beer.  They  speak  of  this  beer  as 
"  non-alcoholic."  Avowed  advocates  of  tem 
perance  relish  it.  It  is  kept  on  tap  in  every  sa 
loon.  If  you  go  to  Denmark,  by  all  means  try 
"  non-alcoholic  "  Pilsener  and  "  non-alcoholic  " 
Muenchener.  The  Danish  brewer  is  forbidden 
by  law  to  brew  beer  with  over  six  per  cent,  alco 
hol.  Beer  has  almost  entirely  supplanted  rum 
in  Denmark.  It  is  beer  alone  that  has  saved 
Denmark  and  Sweden  from  toppling  to  drunk 
ards'  graves.  If  I  were  a  painter,  I  would  de 
pict  Temperance  with  a  jug  of  foaming  Pilsener 


174    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

bearing  the  legend:  "In  this  sign  thou  shalt 
conquer." 

Denmark,  too,  has  a  few  extremists  who  clamor 
for  the  total  elimination  of  alcohol.  They  have 
established  model  saloons,  where  a  drink  called 
"  Sinalco,"  or  "  Liquorless,"  is  vended.  With 
heroic  determination  I  tasted  this  sickening  con 
coction.  The  innkeeper,  a  retired  officer  of  the 
army,  looked  at  me  half  in  pity,  half  in  scorn. 
"Do  you  drink  this  horrid  stuff?"  I  queried. 
"Yes,"  he  replied;  "in  fact,  'Sinalco'  is  excel 
lent — with  an  admixture  of  whiskey."  That,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  an  amusing  illustration  of  the 
failure  of  absolute  prohibition. 

Recently  an  "  International  Association  against 
the  Exaggeration  of  the  Opponents  of  Alcohol " 
has  been  founded  in  Berlin.  The  reports  of  the 
association  will  be  published  regularly  in  a  schol 
arly  manner.  Their  object  will  be  truth,  not 
propaganda.  Their  experiments  will  tend  to  dis 
prove  once  for  all  that  alcohol  is  an  absolute  poi 
son  and  that  moderate  indulgence  in  alcoholic 
beverages  necessarily  leads  to  intemperance.  They 
will  settle  the  question  definitely.  If  the  result 
of  their  scientific  investigations  should  lead  them 
to  contrary,  unanticipated  conclusions,  they  will  not 
hesitate  to  confess  defeat.  But  that  exigency  can 
not  arise.  It  would  contradict  the  experiences  of 
mankind  from  the  pre-Christian  era  to  Christ, 
from  Christ  to  his  Vicars  in  Rome,  and  reverse 


GAMBRINUS  AND  BACCHUS      175 

the  verdict  of  science  from  Aristotle  to  Munster- 
berg. 

It  was  Miinsterberg  who  recently  knocked  the 
bottom  out  of  the  prohibition  argument.  He  re 
stated  for  the  New  World  the  experience  of  the 
Old  when  he  affirmed  that  the  human  system 
absolutely  needs  a  stimulus  of  some  kind.  If  we 
abolish  alcohol,  sexual  and  other  irregularities  will 
take  its  place.  The  Anti-Liquor  people  were 
foaming  at  the  mouth.  Miinsterberg's  argu 
ments  could  not  be  shaken  nor  his  authority  ques 
tioned. 

The  professional  prohibitionists  remind  me  of 
the  exorcists  of  olden  days.  The  people  came 
to  them  to  drive  out  devils.  The  tribes  of  magi 
cians  and  medicine  men  waxed  fat  and  happy, 
until  humanity  discovered  that  there  were  no 
devils  at  all,  and  that,  at  any  rate,  they  could  not 
be  driven  out.  The  antagonists  of  temperance 
in  the  prohibition  camp  have  humbugged  the 
American  people  by  their  pretense  of  driving  out 
Old  Nick,  when  lo,  Professor  Miinsterberg  lifted 
the  veil  from  their  sham,  and  we  discovered  that 
alcohol  was  not  a  devil. 

Meanwhile  Demon  Rum  thrived  and  flourished, 
until  he  has  come  to  be  really  a  menace.  You 
can  fight  wildfire  effectually  only  with  fire.  You 
can  fight  liquor  only  with  beer.  But,  of  course, 
had  the  Demon  been  properly  subjugated,  the 
officials  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League  would  have 


176    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

been  out  of  a  job.  It's  a  mighty  dangerous  thing 
to  oppose  an  enemy  by  mercenaries  whose  existence 
depends  on  keeping  that  enemy  alive ! 

They  are  very  clever,  these  Anti-Saloon  Lea 
guers.  But  when  they're  up  against  an  honest 
man,  they  don't  understand.  They  invented  a 
pretty  little  trap  for  the  Harvard  professor. 
Through  three  different  literary  agencies  they 
swamped  him  with  flattering  offers  from  an  al 
leged  group  of  brewers  who  were  very  anxious 
indeed  to  have  him  write  an  article  on  the  ad 
vantage  of  drinking  beer — "  Money  no  object." 
The  professor  dropped  the  missives  into  his  waste- 
paper  basket. 

Let  those  who  favor  total  abstinence  follow 
the  lead  of  the  new  International  Association. 
Let  them  investigate  coolly  and  calmly. 
Meanwhile  let  us  profit  by  the  experience  of 
Europe.  Triumphantly  on  an  ocean  of  beer 
the  Ship  of  Temperance  reaches  its  destined  haven. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WE  AND  EUROPE 

HAVING  explained  at  some  length  how  I  re 
gard  Europe,  let  us  now  discuss  how  Europe  re 
gards  us.  Permit  me  to  state  right  here  that  in 
using  the  plural  of  the  first  person  I  am  not  re 
ferring  to  myself,  but  to  the  United  States  of 
America. 

Europe  looks  upon  us  as  the  woman  entre 
trente  et  quarante  looks  upon  a  boy  of  eighteen. 
If  I  were  unkind,  I  might  add  that  she  regards 
us  as  a  woman  of  moderate  means  regards  the  son 
of  a  millionaire.  Every  American  is  supposed  to 
be  first  cousin  to  Croesus.  Selfishness  is  certainly 
mixed  with  Madame  Europe's  sensuous  delight  in 
us.  She  is  quite  prepared  to  borrow  money  from 
us.  Her  fondness  for  us  nevertheless  is  perfectly 
genuine.  She  is  partial  to  striplings, — a  sweet 
little  woman,  with  the  delightful  perversion  of  the 
fascinating  age  so  graphically  depicted  by  Balzac. 
We  stir  her  sensually,  just  as  the  continental  man 
stirs  the  American  woman. 

Europe  is  in  love  with  our  primitiveness.  Our 
young  Barbarians  all  at  play  kindle  in  her  a  pas- 

177 


178     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

sional  conflagration.  She  forgives  the  uncouth- 
ness  of  our  ideas  because  we  are  gloriously  young. 
Our  awkwardness  is  to  her  a  symbol  of  masculine 
robustness.  We  exert  upon  her  the  fascination 
of  a  Caliban.  She  does  not  realize  as  yet  that 
we  have  lost  the  virile  earthiness  of  Caliban  with 
out  having  lost  our  crudity.  She  accepts  our 
drafts  on  the  future  because  she  never  suspects 
that  we  may,  in  the  end,  default  payment. 

Of  course,  at  present  she  does  not  take  us  quite 
seriously.  There  is  nothing  that  bars  a  book 
from  success  in  England  as  effectually  as  an  Amer 
ican  furore.  I  know,  for  that  is  what  hap 
pened  to  me.  Germany  reads  our  books  occa 
sionally,  but  always  with  a  smile  of  amusement. 
She  reads  them  half  ashamed,  as  we  read  "  Nick 
Carter."  Still,  our  vitality  impresses  the  cultured 
and  effete  European.  He  admires  at  least  the 
strenuosity  of  two  representative  and  dynamic 
American  types :  Roosevelt  and  Barnum. 

We  are  forgiven  much  because  we  are  regarded 
as  being  still  outside  the  pale  of  civilization. 
Europe  will  not  be  surprised  at  anything  we  may 
do.  u  American  "  and  "  grotesquely  vulgar  "  are 
almost  synonymous  terms.  The  newspapers  espe 
cially  are  responsible  for  the  most  absurd  miscon 
ceptions  of  the  American  character. 

There  was  a  time  when  one  might  have  inferred 
that  the  inimitable  Baron  von  Munchausen  had 
left  innumerable  lineal  descendants  with  a  genius 


WE  AND  EUROPE  179 

for  journalism,  and  that  all  were  in  the  New 
World  as  correspondents  for  dailies  in  Berlin. 
Many  of  his  progeny  are  still  engaged  in  their 
successful  conspiracy  against  truth;  but,  in  spite  of 
their  efforts,  a  saner  understanding  of  us  has  per 
meated  the  German  cerebrum.  For  this  trans 
formation  we  are  chiefly  indebted  to  that  exchange 
of  intellectual  commodities  christened  Kulturaus- 
tausch  by  the  Germans. 

On  the  wave  of  this  movement  a  vast  number 
of  able  observers,  men  of  acumen  and  insight, 
have  visited  the  United  States  and  embodied  their 
impressions  in  divers  publications.  Some  of  their 
books — most  of  them — are  sheer  nonsense.  In 
a  few,  however,  the  wheat  outweighs  the  chaff. 

Ludwig  Fulda's  American  impressions  are 
avowedly  personal  and  sketchy.  Nevertheless,  he 
has  made  some  shrewd  and  felicitous  observations. 
Von  Polenz,  the  late  novelist,  is  responsible  for  a 
very  readable  and  altogether  remarkable  American 
book. 

Professor  Hugo  Miinsterberg  has  done  for 
Germany  what  Bryce  has  done  for  England.  His 
book  on  America  is  an  inquiry  into  the  essential 
and  fundamental  American  idea.  It  is  a  large 
interpretation  of  our  national  life.  H.  G.  Wells 
alone  has  developed,  in  his  prophetic  vision  of 
our  future,  similarly  stupendous  horizons.  H.  G. 
Wells  and  the  Harvard  professor  are  intellectual 
kinsmen.  Both  men  have  in  common  the  analyt- 


i8o     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

ical  faculty  of  the  man  of  science  and  the 
quick  intuition  of  poets.  (Professor  Miinster- 
berg,  I  may  here  betray  in  parenthesis,  is  the 
author  of  a  book  of  strangely  chiseled  and  pas 
sionate  verse.) 

Wells  and  Miinsterberg  illumine  with  ultra 
violet  rays  the  obscurest  crevices  of  individual  and 
racial  psychology.  Wells  somewhere  says  that 
the  figure  of  Miinsterberg  stands  out  in  bold  re 
lief  from  his  Harvard  colleagues  by  its  German 
characteristics.  I  think  for  once  Mr.  Wells  is 
mistaken.  Miinsterberg  would  be  equally  con 
spicuous  in  any  company  of  men,  at  home  or 
abroad.  We  look  upon  him,  however,  as  a  fixture 
in  our  own  intellectual  household.  His  American 
traits  are  as  pronounced  as  his  German  peculiari 
ties.  He  is  a  citizen  of  the  world,  drawing  his 
strength  from  many  civilizations.  We  may  hope 
that  this  type,  almost  lost  in  Europe — the  poets 
and  scholars  of  the  Renaissance  were  its  only  pre 
cursors — may  rise  modernized  and  transfigured 
from  the  crucible  of  American  civilization. 

It  is  the  foreigner  who  is  most  apt  in  character 
izing  the  peculiarities  of  a  people.  Ludwig  Max 
Goldberger,  Privy  Councilor  to  the  Kaiser,  has 
clinched  in  one  significant  phrase  all  that  the 
New  World  stands  for  in  the  eyes  of  the  Old. 
We  are  the  land  of  "  unlimited  possibilities." 
That  is  what  makes  us  so  interesting  to  Europe. 
Like  our  own  Rip  Van  Winkle,  we  have  slumbered 


WE  AND  EUROPE  181 

for  centuries.  In  fact,  we  have  hardly  rubbed  our 
eyes  awake  since  we  drove  the  Redcoats  away. 
The  awakening  of  America  will  be  more  startling 
than  the  awakening  of  China. 

As  an  economist,  Goldberger's  primary  interest 
has  been  in  industrial  problems.  His  book  is  a 
good  book,  a  big  book.  The  man  himself  is  a 
powerful  agent  of  the  culture  exchange.  It  is 
one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  being  a  coun 
cilor  that  the  Emperor  never  requires  one's  coun 
sel.  Goldberger's  case  is  a  brilliant  exception. 
Whenever  an  American  topic  clouds  the  horizon 
of  discussion,  the  government  as  well  as  the  press 
turn  to  him  for  illumination. 

Goldberger  is  only  one  of  the  nuclei  in  a  large 
circle  of  eminent  men  whose  sympathies  are  al 
ways  enlisted  in  affairs  of  mutual  benefit  to  Ger 
many  and  the  United  States.  There  is,  above  all, 
von  Holleben,  the  polished  and  jovial  former  am 
bassador.  His  Excellency,  while  advanced  in 
years,  is  a  potent  factor  in  German  politics.  It 
was  von  Holleben  who  first  recognized  the  im 
portance  of  the  university  as  a  postilion  d'amour 
between  nations.  Professors  Brandl  and  Pasz- 
kowski,  both  of  the  University  of  Berlin,  are  ar 
dent  supporters  of  the  close  intellectual  courtship 
between  their  country  and  ours.  Both  have  visited 
the  United  States  repeatedly.  Paszkowski  is  the 
director  of  the  Official  University  Information  Bu 
reau,  through  which  he  directs  and,  to  a  certain 


182    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

extent,  controls  the  exchange  of  students.  Pro 
fessor  Schiemann,  a  friend  of  the  Kaiser,  and  an 
authority  on  political  subjects,  devotes  no  small 
part  of  his  attention  to  us.  Two  ministers  of 
state,  Hentig  and  Moeller,  have  also  made  special 
investigations  of  American  institutions.  The 
prime  mover  of  the  whole  American  agitation, 
however,  is  that  Prince  of  Peace,  William  II. 

It  has  been  an  open  secret  for  many  years  that 
it  is  the  wish  of  William's  heart  to  discover  Amer 
ica  for  himself.  I  know  positively  that  not  very 
long  ago  every  preparation  for  his  departure  to 
the  New  World  had  been  made  with  the  profound 
secrecy  characteristic  of  German  diplomacy.  The 
German  Ambassador  in  Washington  had  carefully 
mapped  out  plans  for  the  safety  of  the  monarch. 
The  Foreign  Office,  however,  was  opposed  to  the 
visit  and  at  the  last  moment  prevailed  upon  the 
Emperor  to  abandon  his  project,  for  reasons  of 
international  etiquette.  The  inability  of  the  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States  to  reciprocate  the  cour 
tesy  of  an  imperial  visit,  while  vested  with  the 
sovereignty  of  his  office,  thwarted  what  would 
have  been  an  historic  event  of  incalculable  im 
portance. 

I  am  felicitating  myself  that  my  brief  sojourn 
in  Berlin  has  been  a  factor,  however  slight,  in 
crystallizing  the  pro-American  sentiment.  We  are 
all  urged  by  the  deep-rooted  instinct,  identical 
perhaps  with  the  will  to  live,  that  prompts  us  to 


WE  AND  EUROPE  183 

leave  behind  us,  of  the  various  phases  of  our  exist 
ence,  traces  more  permanent  than  ourselves. 

To  that  instinct  are  we  indebted  for  art.  We 
owe  to  it  poetry,  photography,  music  and  sculp 
ture.  The  child  writing  upon  the  sand,  or  Michael 
Angelo  writing  in  marble;  the  Alpine  climber  im 
printing  his  futile  initials  upon  the  ironic  face  of 
the  rock,  and  Shakespeare  embalming  his  love  in 
a  sonnet — all  are  swayed  by  the  same  masterful 
impulse,  to  perpetuate  the  perennially  transient. 
The  Church  itself  rose  in  response  to  this  impulse 
in  Jesus;  He  lives  in  the  bread  and  wine  of  com 
munion.  And  is  not  marriage  likewise  the  issue 
of  the  desire  to  imprison  eternally  fugitive  emo 
tions? 

While  I  have  founded  neither  a  household  nor 
a  religion,  I  have  at  least  commemorated  my  Ber 
lin  days  in  the  German-American  Evening.  This 
institution — for  as  such  it  may  now  be  regarded— 
leaped  Athene-like  from  my  brain  when  I  de 
livered  a  lecture  before  a  brilliant  bi-lingual  assem 
blage  at  the  Hotel  de  Rome,  in  a  banquet  hall 
consecrated  by  exchange-professorial  tradition  to 
things  American  in  the  capital  of  the  Kaiser.  The 
lecture,  subsequently  repeated  before  the  Colonial 
Society  and  the  sovereign  Burgomaster  of  Ham 
burg,  outlined  German  influences  on  American 
civilization.  The  invitations  bore  the  names  of 
several  ambassadors,  ministers  of  state,  privy  coun 
cilors,  and  of  distinguished  professors.  I  men- 


1 84    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

tion  these  facts  because  they  are  significant  of  the 
interest  entertained  among  the  dominant  intellec 
tual  minority  in  ambassadors  from  the  New 
World,  be  they  diplomats,  pedagogues  or  poets. 

The  support  of  this  solid  faction  is  more  im 
portant  than  the  support  of  the  people.  By  this 
I  do  not  intimate  that  the  people  are  unfriendly 
to  us,  but  we  cannot  ask  untutored  brains  to  grasp 
the  actual  import  to  them  of  a  distant  continent 
teeming  with  millions  of  human  atoms.  The  Ger 
man  people  at  large  regard  us  still  through  the 
romantic  haze  of  Cooper's  tales.  A  few  of  the 
more  advanced  eye  us  through  the  spectacles  of 
Villiers  de  1'Isle  Adam's  fantastical  description  of 
Edison,  the  magician. 

We,  being  less  imaginative,  are  even  more  un 
just  to  the  Germans.  Our  knowledge  of  Germany 
is  largely  deduced  from  Viennese  comic  operas, 
and  the  novels  of  George  Barr  McCutcheon.  We 
are,  however,  equally  ignorant  of  our  own  coun 
try.  We  have  not  even  a  clear  mental  image  of 
Missouri  or  Texas.  We  certainly  have  no  defi 
nite  knowledge  of  the  determining  ethnic  factors 
in  the  sum  of  our  racial  characteristics. 

We  are  satisfied  that  we  have  received  our  cul 
ture,  as  well  as  our  language,  from  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers.  We  look  upon  England  as  our  mother, 
although  we  are  no  less  closely  related  to  the  coun 
try  of  Nietzsche  and  Frederick  the  Great.  The 
facts  may  be  gathered  from  the  bulky  volumes  of 


WE  AND  EUROPE  185 

learned  professors.  Read,  for  instance,  Professor 
Faust.  I  refuse  to  weigh  down  the  good  ship  of 
my  style  with  statistics.  Statistics  are  proverbially 
mendacious.  The  German  influence  by  far  sur 
passes  the  German  influx. 

We  are  a  Germanic,  not  an  Anglo-Saxon  people. 
The  Norseman  discovered  America  five  hundred 
years  before  Columbus.  And  despite  the  historical 
evidence  to  the  contrary,  the  Dutch  still  hold  New 
York.  Pennsylvania  was  on  the  point  of  making 
German  the  official  state  language.  In  the  year 
before  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  a  group 
of  Germans  in  Philadelphia  issued  a  similar  procla 
mation  defying  the  King.  German  money  fed  the 
flame  of  the  Revolution  when  it  was  almost  ex 
hausted.  Frederick  the  Great  was  the  first  Euro 
pean  monarch  who  officially  recognized  American 
independence.  The  Kaiser  in  courting  America 
merely  continues  the  policy  of  his  ancestor.  The 
Emancipation  of  the  Slaves  and  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment,  I  regret  to  say,  must  also,  at  least  in 
part,  be  credited  to  the  Germans. 

The  Germans  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,  the 
chosen  people  of  the  New  Order.  The  French 
man,  Gobineau,  and  the  Englishman,  Professor 
Chamberlain  of  the  University  of  Vienna,  have 
startled  the  world  by  rewriting  history  authenti 
cally  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Aryan.  The 
most  radical  of  their  disciples  claim  the  universe 
for  the  Germans.  Even  Jesus,  we  are  told,  be- 


1 86    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

longed  to  a  tribe  suffused  with  Aryan-Germanic 
blood.  I  am  not  prepared  to  maintain  that  the  Cru 
cified  was  a  German,  but  I  am  convinced  that  Pilate, 
his  judge,  was,  as  the  Pan-Germans  claim,  Ger 
manic  by  blood.  This  theory  bears  the  earmark 
of  psychological  truth.  I  can  touch  it  and  feel  it. 
I  dearly  love  to  think  that  the  Roman  Governor 
may  have  been  one  of  my  forbears.  He  evidently 
was  one  of  the  forbears  of  Kant.  "  What  is 
truth?  " — the  eternal  query  ringing  down  the  ages 
could  have  sprung  only  from  the  lips  and  the 
brooding  brain  of  a  Teuton. 

Greece,  in  the  days  of  its  bloom,  continues  the 
Pan-German  argument,  was  a  nation  purely  Ger 
manic.  (I  am  reminded  here  again  of  the  purely 
Germanic  features  of  Plato.)  When  the  German 
blood  ebbed  away,  corruption  and  corrosion  poi 
soned  the  Athenian  body  politic.  These  hypothe 
ses  are  plausible  if  fantastic,  although  I  suspect 
that  their  authors  have  stretched  their  point  until 
it  resembles  a  man,  naturally  short  in  stature,  who 
has  rested  a  night  under  the  roof  of  Procrustes. 

We  need  not  draw  upon  mythology,  however, 
to  convince  ourselves  that  English  is  merely  a  cor 
rupted  Low  German  dialect.  (Remember,  dear 
reader,  that  I  have  always  insisted  upon  the  aes 
thetic  qualities  of  corruption.)  Our  education, 
our  art,  and  our  science  are  ineradicably  German. 
Our  soil  itself  welcomes  the  German.  The  Eng 
lishman  is,  after  all,  only  a  German  with  a  Norman 


WE  AND  EUROPE  187 

veneer.  In  America  the  veneer  drops  off.  By 
brain-fiber  and  by  blood  we  are  more  German  than 
English.  These  reflections  are  not  mine,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  but  emanate  from  an  Anglo-Amer 
ican,  Professor  John  W.  Burgess,  that  excellent 
friend  of  the  Kaiser.  Professor  Marion  D. 
Learned,  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  speaks 
of  himself  as  a  "  Yankee-German  ";  and  the  dis 
tinguished  Goethe  student,  Professor  Calvin 
Thomas  of  Columbia,  refers  to  himself  as  a  "  Ger 
man-American  by  elective  affinity." 

Of  course,  I  have  used  the  word  "  German  " 
in  the  broader  sense  of  Germanic.  My  readers, 
like  those  of  Plato,  must  accustom  themselves  to 
subtle  discriminations.  The  Germans,  as  distin 
guished  from  their  Anglo-Saxon  cousins,  have  a 
vital  function  in  the  making  of  our  nation.  They 
furnish  an  antidote  to  the  venom  of  Puritanism. 
I  myself  have  always  supplied  that  antidote  lib 
erally. 

The  victory  of  the  liberal  Teutonic  spirit  is 
clearly  and  perfectly  foreshadowed  in  the  two  fore 
most  Americans  politically,  Roosevelt  and  Taft. 
Theodore,  with  all  his  faults,  is  not,  thank 
Heaven,  a  Puritan.  W.  H.  Taft,  whom  I  have 
always  loved  for  the  Shakespearean  flavor  of  his 
initials,  is  a  powerful  champion  of  broad  tolerance. 

But  I  have  been  drifting  upon  the  perilous  seas 
of  ethnological  speculation.  Let  us  rub  the  magic 
ring,  and  presto,  we  are  back  once  more  where 


1 88     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

we  started,  in  the  brilliantly  lighted  hall  of  the 
Hotel  de  Rome.  Tout  Berlin  is  present  and  ap 
parently  interested,  and  the  motion  is  made  and 
carried  to  perpetuate  the  German-American  Even 
ing. 

The  principal  speaker  of  the  second  German- 
American  Evening,  six  months  later,  was  the 
author  of  my  being.  Let  me  state  that  I  am  not 
alluding  to  my  father  in  Heaven,  but  to  my  father 
on  earth.  The  third  German-American  Evening 
was  an  elaborate  occasion.  Grand  Admiral  von 
Koster,  newly  returned  from  the  Hudson-Fulton 
celebration,  October,  1909  (I  mention  the  date  for 
the  benefit  of  posterity),  rendered  his  homage  to 
the  American  people.  Dr.  Wheeler  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  California,  and  Professor  Moore  of 
Harvard,  addressed  the  assemblage  in  English. 

I  hope  that  the  German-American  Evening  will 
constitute  a  permanent  forum  for  the  discussion 
of  things  German-American  in  Berlin.  But  I  shall 
make  no  such  prediction,  lest  three  hundred  years 
from  this  writing  some  spectacled,  post-graduate 
student,  having  lampooned  Shakespeare's  geogra 
phy,  impeach  my  historical  prophecy  in  an  elabo 
rate  dissertation. 

I  wonder  what  would  have  happened  if  a  cer 
tain  Distinguished  Personage  had  scaled  the  plat 
form  on  one  of  the  German-American  Evenings, 
and  revealed  to  a  listening  world  what  privately 
he  has  confided  to  me. 


WE  AND  EUROPE  189 

Let  me  say  right  here  that  it  will  be  quite  im 
possible  to  fathom  his  identity.  The  things  he 
said  to  me  were  so  startling  that,  had  they  been 
said  by  a  man  of  lesser  caliber,  I  should  not  here 
set  them  down.  The  interview  took  place  at  his 
dwelling.  I  shall  not  describe  the  dwelling.  I 
shall  not  describe  even  the  room.  I  don't  know 
that  I  could  describe  it.  The  moment  he  entered 
I  saw  only  his  eyes.  Strange  eyes  they  were,  pierc 
ing,  like  those  of  a  visionary.  He  gazed  at  me 
in  a  way  that  almost  gave  me  the  creeps.  His 
eyes  seemed  to  look  straight  through  me.  I  don't 
like  people  to  see  through  me.  That  is  the  reason 
I  shall  never  marry  a  clever  woman.  Of  course, 
I  won't  be  able  to  help  it,  if  she  insists  on  marry 
ing  me. 

He  looked  at  me  for  five  minutes.  Then  he 
spoke.  There  were  no  commonplaces  in  what  he 
said,  no  conversational  mortar  to  fill  the  cracks  of 
silence.  Gradually  I  regained  my  self-possession. 
We  came  to  talk  of  America.  I  painted  in  glow 
ing  colors  the  invincibility  of  the  young  republic. 
I  always  talk  well  of  my  country  behind  her  back. 

1  Yes,"  he  said,  slowly,  deliberately.  "  Your  re 
sources  are  boundless,  and  yet — there  are  dangers." 

'What   are   these   dangers?" 

"  Grave  and  terrible  perils  that  will  force  you 
to  lean  upon  the  staff  of  the  Old  World. 

'  There  is,  in  the  first  place,  the  Social  Danger. 
Some  of  you  have  realized  that.  The  forces  of 


190    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

Anarchy  and  Capitalism  are  close  to  a  clash.  You 
may  smile,  but  I  say  to  you  that  a  revolution  is 
imminent.  You  have  eyes  that  see  not,  and  your 
ears  are  deaf.  Perhaps  Taft  will  lead  you  Moses- 
like  out  of  the  wilderness.  But  you  do  not  realize 
that  you  have  lost  your  way.  Reports  of  violence, 
conflict  and  lawlessness,  accumulate  day  by  day. 
We  over  here  take  note  of  them;  you  do 
not. 

"  You  are  so  big  that  you  lose  sight  of  the 
whole.  You  know  nothing  of  the  country  at  large. 
Your  newspapers  are  provincial.  Your  interests 
are  local.  The  American  press  fails  in  its  duty  to 
you.  Unpleasant  facts  are  kept  out  of  print. 
Everything  relating  to  social  conflicts  is  prettily 
dressed  up  before  it  is  meted  out  to  you.  Your 
papers  print  every  word  of  some  sensational  trial, 
but  I  look  in  vain  for  reports  of  the  doings  of  Con 
gress.  The  speeches  of  your  representatives  are 
buried  in  the  Congressional  Record.  The  opinions 
of  amiable  criminals  and  strumpets  are  commented 
upon  in  press-room  and  pulpit.  You  are  chatter 
ing  monkeys,  brainlessly  absorbed  in  the  present, 
unheedful  of  the  imminent  earthquake.  We  hear 
its  grumblings  across  the  sea.  Like  the  nobles 
of  the  court  of  Louis  XVI,  you  dance  in  the 
shadow  of  the  guillotine." 

I  looked  at  him  questioningly.  He  was  not 
jesting.  Slowly,  deliberate,  he  continued: 

"  There  is  a  danger  even  greater  than  a  revolu- 


WE  AND  EUROPE  191 

tion,  and  one  from  which  there  is  no  escape.  I 
think  that  you  as  a  people  do  not  realize  the  im 
mensity  of  your  negro  problem.  There  is  no  way 
to  prevent  the  slow  amalgamation  of  races.  The 
inferior  race  will  drag  you  down.  History  and 
science  indorse  my  view.  There  is  no  possibility 
of  eliminating  that  black  tumor  from  your  na 
tional  system.  By  the  laws  of  racial  osmosis,  you 
cannot  prevent  it  from  staining  the  skins  and  the 
brain-cells  of  your  descendants.  In  perhaps  two 
or  three  hundred  years  you  will  be  a  nation  of 
octoroons.  I  can  see  the  specter  of  a  half-breed 
despot,  the  first  American  emperor.  In  your  folly 
you  have  demolished  the  bars  between  citizenship 
and  the  negro.  You  have  shattered  the  strong 
hold  of  racial  prejudice. 

"  In  Germany,  the  Colonial  Society  has  peti 
tioned  the  government  to  exclude  from  citizenship 
the  children  of  mixed  marriages  in  the  colonies. 
There  is  tragedy  in  such  severity.  The  Booker 
T.  Washingtons  may  have  to  suffer.  Better  for 
them  had  they  never  been  born.  An  intelligent 
negro,  like  the  child  prodigy,  is  a  monster.  The 
negro,  like  woman,  is  incapable  of  self-govern 
ment.  He  is  inferior  even  to  woman. 

'  We  Aryans  are  the  appointed  masters  of  the 
world.  God  has  made  the  white  race  the  guar 
dian  of  His  holy  fire.  We  must  cast  out  the  half- 
breed  from  the  sanctuary.  There  is  only  one  sal 
vation  for  you.  And  even  that  cannot  altogether 


192     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

save  you  from  deterioration.  Call  upon  Europe 
for  aid.  Throw  open  your  gates  to  all  the  peoples 
of  the  earth  who  are  your  kindred.  Widen  the 
gulf  between  black  and  white.  Even  encourage 
dissipation  among  the  negroes.  The  end  justifies 
the  means. 

"  Keep  out  the  Mongol  lest  he  conspire  with 
the  African.  Asia  is  your  enemy.  Her  unctuous 
grin  conceals  the  fury  of  her  hate.  She  is  most 
your  enemy  when  most  she  loves  you.  Let  her 
not  drag  down  your  sons  and  daughters  into  the 
slime  of  her  ancient  corruption.  Let  her  meet  you 
in  deadly  combat  rather  than  in  deadlier  embrace. 
Let  her  sons  fight  your  sons,  not  furnish  your 
daughters  with  husbands. 

;t  We  Germans  want  to  keep  our  people  where 
they  are.  We  know  that  blood  and  muscle  are 
precious.  We  actually  do  import  German  peas 
ants  from  Russia.  We  do  not  want  them  to  go 
to  you.  But  for  your  own  sake,  I  tell  you  not 
to  restrict  immigration.  The  restriction  of  im 
migration  is  national  suicide." 

There  was  something  strangely  prophetic  in  this 
man.  For  the  moment  I  was  under  the  spell  of 
his  extraordinary  prediction.  But  when  I  set  foot 
again  in  America  I  was  infected  anew  with  the 
indomitable  optimism  that  has  been  our  salvation 
in  the  past  and  may  be  our  doom  in  the  future. 

Again  he  spoke,  and  again  I  was  inclined  to  dis 
pute  his  views. 


WE  AND  EUROPE  193 

"  There  is  still  another  danger — the  greatest." 

"The  trusts?" 

"  Yes,  the  greatest  of  all  trusts — the  most  ancient 
monopoly.  Are  you  freedom-loving  Americans 
purblind  ?  Don't  you  notice  the  web  of  the  spider  ? 
Don't  you  see  him  circling  about  you  ?  Have  you 
no  intimation  of  the  peril  that  will  be  the  end  of 
your  liberty,  and  hamper  your  feet  in  the  onward 
march  of  the  nations?  " 

"What  can  that  be?' 

His  eyes  gleamed  more  strangely  than  ever. 
He  tossed  back  his  hair  and  I  saw  the  forehead 
furrowed  with  thought  and  care. 

"  I  mean  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  The 
prelates  at  Rome  openly  proclaim  among  them 
selves  that  the  Church  must  regain  in  the  New 
World  what  she  has  lost  in  the  Old.  Don't  you 
feel  the  tentacles  tightening?  Don't  you  notice 
the  growth  of  the  Catholic  sentiment?  Before 
long  Roman  Catholics  will  be  elected  to  high 
offices.  Finally,  the  presidency  itself  will  be  in  the 
grasp  of  the  Church." 

"  I  do  not  share  your  antipathy  to  the  Church," 
I  interrupted.  "  Catholics  are  good  citizens.  I 
believe  in  tolerance  for  all.  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  Church  will  ever  exercise  great  political  in 
fluence  in  America.  The  arm  of  the  Pope  is 
long,  but  it  cannot  effectually  reach  across  the 
sea." 

"  Perhaps.     But  the  Pope  himself  may  cross 


194    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

the  sea.  The  Papacy  in  Italy  is  doomed.  Fugi 
tive  popes  in  the  past  have  fled  to  France.  Whither 
should  the  Holy  Father  flee  to-day?  I  have  posi 
tive  knowledge  that  the  Inner  Circle  of  the  gov 
ernment  of  the  Church  have  outlined  a  campaign 
that  will  enable  the  Pope,  if  occasion  arises,  to- 
establish  his  power  and  rear  the  throne  of  St. 
Peter  on  American  soil.  In  the  shadow  of  that 
throne  your  freedom  will  perish." 

I  was  stunned  for  the  moment.  If  any  man 
but  this  man  had  spoken,  I  would  have  laughed 
in  his  face.  Was  he  a  maniac?  Was  he  a  proph 
et?  Or  both?  I  can  only  repeat  what  he  said, 
as  I  reiterated  it  to  myself  later  when,  bewildered 
but  still  impressed  by  his  curious  and  insist 
ent  mentality,  I  strode  through  the  streets  of 
Berlin. 

We  expect  life  to  run  perpetually  unruffled.  We 
are  inclined  to  regard  as  deranged  those  whose 
vision  is  clearer  than  ours.  The  world  has  always 
crucified  its  saviors  and  prophets.  The  cataclysms 
of  history  seem  logical  and  inevitable  to  impartial 
posterity.  They  are  utterly  surprising  to  those 
whom  the  clash  destroys.  The  unknown  force  that 
makes  playthings  of  nations  and  gods,  mercifully 
strikes  us  with  blindness. 

A  dozen  anxious  questions  rushed  to  the  tip  of 
my  tongue,  but  before  I  had  time  to  marshal  my 
thoughts,  a  uniformed  attendant  interrupted  us  a 
second  time. 


WE  AND  EUROPE  195 

"  His  Royal  Highness,"  I  heard  him  whisper, 
"  has  been  waiting  for  several  minutes." 

Half  skeptically,  half  perplexed,  I  kowtowed, 
and  left  the  field  to  the  Royal  Highness. 


CHAPTER  XV 

I  AND  AMERICA 

MY  German  friends  tell  me  I  am  extremely 
American.  They  mean  to  imply  that  I  am  not 
an  idealist.  I  admit  that  I  have  a  bank  account, 
and  that,  in  many  ways,  I  am  a  Barbarian.  Like 
most  celebrated  Americans,  I  am  really  a  self-made 
man.  Let  me  here  throw  light  on  the  obscurest 
chapter  of  my  autobiography. 

Soon  after  we  had  arrived  in  this  country,  my 
father,  having  seen  the  bankruptcy  of  the  intellect 
abroad,  determined  that  I  was  to  be  a  son 
of  the  soil.  I  was  given  into  the  care  of  a  Balti 
more  florist,  and  earned  at  least  my  "  keep  "  at 
the  age  of  twelve.  In  the  morning  I  went  to 
town  with  chrysanthemums,  roses  and  smilax;  and 
there  was  an  old  lady  who  bought  my  flowers  from 
me  and  always  gave  me  a  tip.  I  was  very  thank 
ful  for  that  tip.  I  recently  found  a  letter  of  mine 
written  to  my  father,  in  those  Baltimore  days, 
in  which  I  informed  him  that  twenty-five  cents  a 
week  pocket-money  would  place  me  on  a  sound 
financial  basis. 

When  the  day's  toil  was  done,  I  devoted  my 
196 


I  AND  AMERICA  197 

leisure  hours  to  a  libretto  entitled  A  Rustic  Don 
Juan,  and  to  a  novel,  Eleanore,  the  Autobigraphy 
of  a  Degenerate  Woman.  My  boss,  fortunately 
or  unfortunately,  was  also  a  poet.  For  a  brief 
space  we  lived  in  Arcadia.  But  when,  instead  of 
nursing  the  flowers,  we  nursed  our  admiration  for 
each  other,  business  began  to  languish,  and  a  fran 
tic  appeal  from  the  florist's  wife  compelled  my 
father  to  take  me  back. 

I  was  now  apprenticed  to  a  florist  in  New  York 
City  at  five  or  six  dollars  a  week.  I  ran  errands, 
and  wrote  a  poem  to  the  proprietor's  wife.  I 
am  afraid  I  was  somewhat  of  a  nuisance.  I  didn't 
know  the  difference  between  East  and  West.  I 
took  bouquets  to  impossible  places.  I  was  in 
ordinately  proud  of  some  verses  of  mine  that  had 
managed  to  creep  into  print.  I  had  been  engaged 
at  Christmas.  After  the  holidays  I  was  dis 
charged.  I  think  they  still  owe  me  three  dollars 
— half  a  week's  wages.  Some  day  I  shall  try 
to  collect  them. 

My  father  at  last  relaxed  in  his  grim  determina 
tion,  and  I  was  once  more  a  schoolboy.  When, 
two  years  later,  I  graduated  from  a  Public  School, 
I  was  the  valedictorian.  And  ever  after,  like  all 
other  valedictorians,  I  have  been  perfectly  useless. 
My  ignorance  is  as  many-sided  as  it  is  profound. 
Owing  to  our  many  changes  of  residence,  my 
schooling  has  been  frequently  interrupted.  There 
are  curious  gaps  in  my  education.  I  can't  punc- 


198     CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

tuate,  spell,  sing,  or  draw.  I  am  blissfully  igno 
rant  of  grammar,  geography  and  arithmetic.  I 
was  absent  from  school  the  day  we  had  the  mul 
tiplication  table.  God  alone  knows  how  I  drifted 
through  college. 

In  Europe  I  would  have  been  regarded  as  a 
youthful  prodigy.  That  might  have  made  me 
conceited.  In  America,  we  expect  youth  to  take 
upon  its  shoulders  the  work  of  the  world.  Europe 
heeds  the  voice  of  graybeards.  She  is  also  fas 
cinated  by  bluebeards.  But  a  beard,  it  seems,  is 
absolutely  essential.  If  I  lived  abroad,  I  would 
still  be  dependent  upon  my  father.  Thus,  a  law 
yer  I  met  in  Berlin  referred  to  himself  as  a  "  young 
man  of  forty,"  and  still  counted  every  week  upon 
the  paternal  allowance.  But  he  possessed  s avoir 
faire.  He  was  a  matchless  dancer  and  a  witty 
table  companion.  Socially,  no  doubt,  the  Euro 
peans  are  our  superiors. 

I  did  not  meet  many  Americans  abroad.  I  let 
the  American  Colony  severely  alone.  There  are 
eighty  million  Americans  in  the  New  World. 
There  will  be  more  presently.  I  did  not  go  abroad 
to  add  new  exemplars  to  my  collection.  Of 
course,  I  never  called  on  my  fellow-passengers. 
I  met  three  of  them — the  two  little  girls  with  their 
mother,  the  Hen — on  the  street.  I  understand 
they  are  doing  exceedingly  well.  But  the  girl  with 
the  pathetic  eyes  has  fulfilled  my  prediction.  She 
was  the  only  American  victim  of  a  railroad  acci- 


I  AND  AMERICA  199 

dent  on  the  Mockernbrucke  in  Berlin.  Her 
bright  small  voice  is  hushed  forever.  The  alien 
mould  has  encompassed  her  little  limbs. 

Still,  good  people,  dry  your  tears.  Like  Lion, 
in  a  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  I  am,  in  reality, 
a  "  gentle  beast  of  good  conscience."  As  far  as 
I  know,  the  lady  is  still  alive.  But  for  the  purpose 
of  this  book  it  was  essential  to  kill  her.  I  had 
prophesied  evil  things  for  her,  and  it  would  have 
been  crudely  inartistic  to  let  the  loose  strands  of  my 
story  dangle  irritatingly  before  the  eyes  of  the 
reader.  Nero  set  a  city  on  fire  for  the  sake  of  a 
beautiful  phrase.  Why  should  not  I,  to  soothe 
my  artistic  conscience,  dispatch  one  hapless  girl? 

The  distance  between  America  and  Europe,  I 
believe,  is  three  thousand  miles.  But  the  distance 
between  Europe  and  America  is  three  thousand 
years.  News  from  home  seems  to  travel  with  the 
exasperating  slowness  of  an  invalid  centipede. 
The  cable  merely  whets  the  appetite  without  ap 
peasing  the  hunger.  The  Paris  edition  of  the 
New  York  Herald  is  principally  devoted  to  local 
gossip.  There  are  two  or  three  publications  in 
English.  I  grasped  at  them  as  a  drowning  man 
at  a  straw.  But  it  happened  to  be  the  straw  that 
broke  the  camel's  back.  The  camel  of  my  pa 
tience  rose  on  its  hind  legs. 

It  was  in  the  whirl  of  the  Presidential  cam 
paign.  But  when  I  tearfully  asked  for  the  bread 
of  information,  Europe  presented  me  with  a  stone. 


200    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

A  vague  feeling  of  dissatisfaction,  like  malaria, 
invaded  my  blood.  The  nudities  of  Olga  Des 
mond  were  powerless  to  charm  me.  The  glitter 
ing  uniforms  of  the  soldiers  had  lost  their  glamor 
for  me.  I  became  increasingly  conscious  of  the 
distance  that  divided  me  from  the  Western  world. 
Like  a  secret  mouse,  patriotism,  nimble-toothed, 
nibbled  away  at  my  heart. 

Then  came  election  night,  with  its  delirious  and 
delightful  uncertainties.  The  earlier  part  of  the 
evening  I  spent  at  the  house  of  Ludwig  Max 
Goldberger.  The  Consul-General  and  his  charm 
ing  wife  were  among  the  guests.  The  atmosphere 
was  surcharged  with  passionate  interest  in  things 
American.  But  the  city  without  was  lulled  in 
slumber.  Never  the  sound  of  a  rattle,  nor  the 
cadenced  "Extry!"  of  the  newsboys!  I  pic 
tured  to  myself  the  crowds  surging  in  waves  be 
fore  those  bulletin  boards  in  my  far-away  Nineveh. 
I  was  one  with  them.  I  was  carried  away  by 
their  emotional  frenzy.  And  my  excitement  af 
fected  the  others.  Telepathically  the  emotion  of 
those  millions  vibrated  through  our  brains.  We 
yelled  with  them,  not  indeed  with  our  throats,  but 
with  our  immortal  souls. 

Our  gathering  broke  up  comparatively  early. 
Special  cable  reports  of  the  election — think  of  it, 
enviable  American  in  Akron,  O. ! — special  cable 
reports  would  be  read  at  the  Adlon.  So  ran  the 
announcement  that  lifted  us  heavenward  as  Jupiter 


I  AND  AMERICA  201 

transported  Europa  upon  his  horns.  A  throng 
of  Americans  had  assembled  in  the  palatial  vesti 
bule  of  the  German  Waldorf-Astoria.  How  I 
loved  to  listen  to  their  speculations  1  How  sweet 
the  resiliency  of  those  nasal  twangs.  They  were 
my  own  people!  This,  for  one  night,  was 
home! 

It  was  about  twelve  o'clock  at  night,  five  hours 
later  than  in  New  York.  The  polls  had  hardly 
been  closed  for  two  hours.  With  exasperating 
slowness  the  news  trickled  through  the  bed  of  the 
ocean.  But,  of  course,  the  returns  were  very 
meager  for  several  hours.  Newspaper  opinion 
had  been  so  effectively  manipulated  in  the  preced 
ing  months,  that  we  in  Europe  were  blindly  fum 
bling  and  grumbling  for  facts  in  the  general  con 
fusion. 

Quietly  amidst  the  excited  throng  the  Ambassa 
dor  of  the  United  States  sat  back  in  his  chair, 
chatting.  David  Jayne  Hill  is  the  most  popular 
ambassador  in  the  capital  of  the  Kaiser.  From 
the  first,  Berlin  has  treated  Hill  with  the  con 
sideration  that  one  bestows  on  a  guest  who  has 
been  inadvertently  wounded.  What  in  the  be 
ginning  was  courtesy  has  crystallized  into  habit. 
Hill's  personal  fascination  has  captivated  the  Ger 
mans.  The  Americans  likewise  adore  him.  His 
simplicity  is  in  itself  distinction.  Instead  of  as 
suming  a  comic  opera  uniform  that  provokes  the 
ridicule  of  the  cognoscenti,  he  appears  even  at 


202    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

functions  of  state  in  the  unostentatious  apparel  of 
any  other  American  gentleman. 

There  was  a  time  when  ambassadors  were  but 
the  mouthpieces  of  the  sovereigns  who  made  them. 
To-day  the  ambassador  is  the  spokesman  of  the 
people  he  serves.  The  ambassador  of  to-morrow 
will  be  the  poet  bearing  forward  the  torch  of  his 
people's  genius.  Even  to-day  the  most  important 
embassies  are  placed  in  the  hands  of  men  of  lit 
erary  attainment.  James  Bryce  and  M.  Jusserand 
are  distinguished  men  of  letters.  Count  Bern- 
storff,  the  German  Ambassador  in  Washington, 
is  a  brilliant  speaker.  When  I  first  met  Dr.  Hill, 
I  knew  him  to  be  the  author  of  several  philosophi 
cal  works,  but  I  did  not  know  that  I  was  partially 
indebted  to  him  for  whatever  graces  of  style  I 
may  possess.  I  had  no  idea  that  the  man  clothed 
with  the  sovereignty  of  the  United  States  was  the 
author  of  my  old  college  text-book — Hill's  Rhet 
oric. 

Between  three  and  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
we  knew  that  Bryan  had  been  .overwhelmed  by  the 
usual  landslide.  There  was  general  rejoicing. 
The  proprietor  of  the  Adlon  spoke  a  word  of 
command,  and  champagne  rained  like  manna.  An 
unseen  band  began  to  play  "  My  Country,  'Tis  of 
Thee,"  and  the  rhythm  of  the  music  blended  with 
the  beat  of  my  heart.  It  is  quite  probable  that 
there  was  no  band.  My  recollections  of  the  rest 
of  the  evening  are  obscured  by  a  roseate  haze. 


I  AND  AMERICA  203 

That  night  I  was  unfaithful  to  Europe.  My 
heart  longed  for  America  fiercely,  as  the  cannibal 
yearns  for  his  peculiar  diet.  Madame  Europe, 
you  are  very  wonderful,  though  in  your  youth  you 
were  a  goose  and  fell  in  love  with  a  bull.  Colum 
bia  is  very  naive,  I  admit,  but  there  is  a  certain 
charm  in  her  inexperience.  I  admire  your  knowl 
edge,  Madame.  There  is  fascination  in  your  lips, 
painted,  and  salt  with  sophistication.  But  some 
times  I  am  chilled  by  the  feeling  that  perhaps 
you  are  merely  an  old  coquette.  I  wonder  whether 
your  ideals,  too,  are  not  powder  and  paint.  There 
is  a  cynical  twist  in  your  smile  that  exasperates 
me  beyond  endurance. 

We,  I  think,  are  more  genuine,  after  all.  We 
imagine  we  are  sophisticated,  but  that  is  a  fond 
delusion.  Columbia  is  like  a  squaw  who  insists 
on  wearing  beauty  plasters  all  over  her  face.  Such 
artificialities,  Madame  Europe,  are  becoming  to 
you.  They  enhance  the  fascination  of  a  rococo 
lady.  They  are  ludicrous  on  the  face  of  the 
squaw.  But  we  shall  get  over  those  things.  We 
shall  be  frankly  Barbarian.  The  Middle  Ages 
have  not  bequeathed  their  wisdom  to  us;  neither 
have  they  left  us  their  folly. 

Our  common  sense  is  refreshing.  There  is  the 
Father  of  our  Country.  I  have  made  fun  of  him 
once  in  a  while.  Yet  I  admire  George  Washing 
ton.  I  take  off  my  hat  to  him.  Everybody  can 
die  for  his  country.  It  takes  a  higher  courage  to 


204    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

run  away  for  it.  George  Washington  ran  away 
for  eight  years.  Think  of  the  superb  legs  of 
George  running  through  the  swamps  of  New  Jer 
sey!  If  Washington  had  been  a  European  he 
would  not  have  run  away.  He  would  have  died 
for  his  country — and  we  might  still  be  an  English 
province. 

Yes,  Madame,  I  repeat,  you  are  very  wonder 
ful;  and  you  eat  truffles  for  breakfast.  But  one 
tires  of  truffles.  Oatmeal  is  more  conducive  to 
health.  And  not  every  one  who  delights  in  truffles 
is  a  gourmet.  It  is  a  taste  that  the  gourmet  and 
the  hog  have  in  common.  And,  Madame,  I  beg 
your  pardon, — not  all  your  lovers  are  gourmets. 
But  they  are  all  weary  with  world-wisdom. 
They  suffer  from  mental  indigestion.  Our  in 
digestion  is  due  to  mince  pie.  Your  stomach 
balks  at  Nietzsche  and  Stirner.  Besides,  you 
are  very  ungrateful.  Vainly  your  Hauptmanns 
and  Sudermanns  perform  intellectual  acrobatics. 
Hardly  a  smile  responds  from  lips  eternally 
bored.  You  are  a  child  of  the  spouse  of  Mar 
cus  Aurelius: 

//  one  should  love  you  with  real  love, 
Such   things   have  been —   .    .    . 


You'd  give  him,  poison,  shall  we  say? 
Or  what,  Faustine? 


I  AND  AMERICA  205 

You  are  fascinating,  but  be  wise.  Madame,  I 
counsel  you :  put  not  your  faith  in  striplings.  The 
white  magic  of  virginity  defeats  the  black  magic 
of  Circe.  Thinking  it  over,  I  shall  not  keep  house 
with  you,  Madame.  Somehow,  after  all,  my  heart 
goes  out  to  Columbia.  The  cynical  smile  around 
your  cruel  mouth  deepens.  I  know  what  it  in 
sinuates.  The  roue,  you  say,  delights  in  the  se 
duction  of  innocence.  But  I  am  not  a  roue.  Not 
mine  the  loathsome  emotion  of  Verlaine  in  that 
most  morbid  sonnet  ever  penned  by  the  hand  of 
man. 

I  shall  not  corrupt  America.  I  am  myself  un- 
corrupted  at  heart.  I  have  passed  through  fires 
of  sin,  but  they  have  not  singed  a  hair  of  my 
head.  Mine  shall  be  the  nobler  pleasure  of  im 
parting  knowledge.  And  I  shall  teach  Columbia 
what  you  have  taught  me.  I  shall  not  teach  her 
all.  Of  course,  people  who  marry  to  uplift  their 
wives  invariably  get  the  worst  of  it.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  America  will  vulgarize  me.  But 
at  least  my  gifts,  whatever  they  may  be,  shall  be 
thrown  into  the  crucible  of  the  future.  Perhaps 
they  are  needed  in  the  miraculous  transformation. 

There  was  a  time  when  I  wavered  between  two 
literatures.  I  consulted  with  friends  on  both  sides 
of  the  ocean,  and  it  was  finally  agreed  upon  that 
America,  being  poorer  than  Europe,  needed  me 
more.  I  decided  to  become  an  American  classic. 


206    CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BARBARIAN 

I  voluntarily  deserted  the  company  of  Baudelaire 
and  of  Heine,  for  that  of  Longfellow  and  Whit- 
tier. 

I  will  not  pose  as  a  martyr.  It  really  wasn't 
a  matter  of  choice  with  me.  I  can't  help  being 
an  American.  I  am  a  son  of  this  soil.  What 
ever  I  am,  America  has  made  me.  My  feelings 
for  her  are  deeper  than  gratitude.  Like  all  deep 
things,  like  love  and  faith,  they  are  instinctive. 
But  I  am  not  sentimental.  I  am  like  the  lover 
who  is  not  blind  to  the  faults  of  his  mistress.  I 
hate  and  I  love  her. 

I  was  never  comfortable  abroad.  I  sometimes 
seem  to  myself  a  chameleon — an  inverted  one.  I 
always  assume  a  color  at  variance  with  my  en 
vironment.  There  was  an  ever  tangible  barrier 
between  Europe  and  me.  The  memory  of  home 
severed  us  like  a  sword.  I  never  knew  how  dearly 
I  loved  the  New  World  until  late  one  night,  when 
the  steamer  glided  into  port.  New  York  beck 
oned  to  me,  glorious  and  golden  in  barbaric  splen 
dor.  Like  a  city  wrought  in  fire  she  arose !  Like 
a  Titan  woman  of  Baudelaire  she  drew  me  upon 
her  bosom. 

And  I,  remembering  my  entry  into  Berlin,  now 
seemed  to  myself  like  a  young  Barbarian  who, 
having  escaped  unscathed  from  the  Siren  City,  has 
returned  to  his  pristine  love.  Marvelous  tales 
he  tells  her,  and  circles  her  breasts  with  strange 
jewels.  And  only  sometimes  in  the  night  when, 


I  AND  AMERICA  207 

listless  and  uncomprehending,  she  slumbers  beside 
him,  his  thoughts  wander  back  to  perfumed  women 
with  painted  lips  and  wise,  far  away  beyond  the 
watery  hills. 


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